Bostonist alerts us to the sad, strange saga of two Harvard Crimsoners who decide to go on an expedition to that far-flung land of the Houyhnhnms Tufts Jumbos. Turns out, the party scene at Tufts on Valentine’s Day (huh?!) is no better than Harvard’s. Okay! Did the Crimson put two investigative reporters on the case, or were these two exciting, worldly people (who for some reason took a “$15 cab ride,” all right, Harvard, to a place that commenters note is easily accessible by T) just going to Tufts anyway? They may as well have written their article before they left Cambridge for the night; count the cliches in this excerpt alone!

Three girls pirouetted violently on the dance floor while a frazzled frat brother nursed a paper cup. A collection of listless sorority girls loitered in the hallway, coats on as if about to leave. We sauntered past lots of rooms, some with people in them, none with anyone even close to making out. Oddly it reminded us of Revenge of the Nerds.

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Or was there an even douchier party in the Ivy League this weekend? Always a possibility.

When Harvard’s Pforzheimer House announced it was throwing an official Aleksey Vayner-themed party last week, we assumed it would be a 495-lb. blast. People could come in karate robes, or Under Armour and dance pants; gently serve tennis balls at 140 miles an hour; there could even be a little table in the back for plagiarizing books about the Holocaust. Picture it: 2 a.m., hundreds of “Impossible is Nothing” acolytes swilling Aleksey Ale and Vayner Vodka Tonics, ballroom dancing to the beat of “Solamente Tu Amor” and “The Way of the Sword” — what could go wrong?

Alas, as the above photo shows, the event was rather under-attended. In fairness, it was up against Winthrop House’s “Country Clubbin’: A Harvard-Yale ‘Tea Partay’.” More depressing pics after the jump; either this means Alekseygate has officially gotten old (should we cancel our Christmas benefit gala for Youth Empowerment Strategies?), or it’s just the usual case of Harvard kids unable to have fun when it’s handed to them on a platter.

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Uh, make that “A Sorta Ivy Halloween” — we have an angle here, we swear! The pics in this collection are from the Facebook account of Chris Brady, Yale ‘05, the grandson of former Treasury secretary Nicholas F. Brady ‘52. Chris is a true blueblood (FB groups include “There’s a Yale Building Named After Me” and “1st Team All-FarHills Steeplechase”), and he parties accordingly. That’s Michelle “Harriet the Spy” Trachtenberg at right with Lydia Hearst-Shaw (Ford model, daughter of Patty Hearst, heir to the Hearst publishing fortune, and vampiric breast enthusiast), hanging out with Chris at New York’s Bungalow 8 the other night.

More pics after the jump, including one absolutely astounding shot of Michelle’s tongue.

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Halloween is a fabulous opportunity to make poor decisions. Every year, same story: You start off doing something ironic — dye your hair, dance to Wham!, get a little too carried away with your Mark Foley costume. Innocent fun. Then you look at the photos the next day and wince at how terrifyingly sincere it all looks.

Well, the unforgiving morning-after eye of Facebook has claimed its latest victim: Penn President Amy Guttman. We’re sure it felt hilariously tongue-in-cheek to pose with a student dressed as a suicide bomber at her Halloween party. Apparently these guys didn’t get the joke. Li’l Bo Peep Gutmann is a front-runner to be the next president of Harvard, and this is hardly the publicity she needs.

P.S. To be fair, “too soon” costumes were all the rage this year: at one Ivy party in D.C. last week, two girls showed up dressed as Darfurian refugees, alongside a dude with a bandana and scimitar calling himself a Janjaweed militiaman. They saw us wearing a blazer and asked us to be their U.N. negotiator.

P.P.S. We were scared to write about Saad Saadi ‘06, the student in the photo, when we saw his creepy webpage. Then we learned he’s the one who started this Facebook group, so how tough can he be? (Saadi posted an apology to anyone who was offended by the costume, says the web site that found the pic; the text is after the jump.)

UPDATE 8:30 p.m.: Eric Obenzinger, the Daily Pennsylvanian’s crack opinion page editor, has an interview with Saadi here.

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“What I saw was pure debauchery,” the Fox News producer said. “Girls were falling down drunk, and most were wearing just panties and bras. I went to the bathroom and heard guys having sex in the stall next to me. A record amount of people had to have emergency medical care.” Good God, what was he talking about?

Sex.

Power.

God.

The libidinous event of the Ivy season. Brown’s cocky scoff to Sodom and Gomorrah. SexPowerGod: Aren’t you turned on just thinking about it? Can you wait for the Brown Queer Alliance’s official promotional photos to be released? Wait, we found one!:

Hey, anyone seen our sex drive? It was here a minute ago…

For reasons unclear, this frightened boy is one of BQA’s ambassadors of sexy to the student body. Three more room-temperature shots are after the jump. (Note that one of them is titled “Hot.”)

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After crashing 02138’s launch parties in New York and Boston, we knew we had to complete the trilogy in Washington. We weren’t angry at ourselves for giving favorable coverage to the first two — just disappointed, and you know that always hurts worse. So we went in determined to hate it. Sigh. We tried.

When David Bradley, owner of 02138 and another rag, invites you to party at his home, you don’t ask questions. A sampling of the questions we didn’t ask: “Is Bradley Manor visible from space?” “Where did those two Maybachs in your driveway come from?” “How would one go about being you?”

The house — the former Cuban embassy, we hear — is a secular materialist’s conception of heaven: Impressionist paintings. Statuary. Mirrors, everywhere. A chandelier in the kitchen. Wood-paneled bookshelves. Clocks on every other wall. Couches in the kitchen. Ivy spilling out of massive stone-carved furnishings. A roaring fireplace in the kitchen.

As we soaked it all in, the magazine brass shushed the room and told everyone the evening’s guests had collectively clocked 325 years at Harvard — that’s, like, 569 in Cornell years! Editor Bom Kim then took a moment to lie with a straight face that this crowd, compared to the New York and Boston launch parties, was way better-looking.

Only two members of the Harvard 100 showed up: Grover Norquist and Walter Isaacson. We were a little disappointed, considering four of the top five live in DC. (That, and we were totally planning to shave one side of Ben Bernanke’s face once he’d passed out). As for the rest of the crowd, thank God for name tags.

On the way out, gift bag in hand (We’d been meaning to read The Namesake! They’re mind-readers!), we gave in and climbed behind the wheel of one of the two Maybachs. They weren’t there to be driven; only felt. And as we sat there, petting the hand-stitched upholstery and making quiet vroom noises for a good two minutes, it occurred to us: This is what it feels like to be David Bradley.

We’re so disappointed.

For weeks now we’ve been unable to sleep, horrified that our account of crashing the 02138launch party didn’t hate enough on the widely-considered-obnoxious magazine. SexandtheIvy.com offered to cover the mag’s Boston launch for us, and we had our fingers crossed that she would better resist the open bar and write something scathing — or at least bed one of the staffers. Alas. Her dispatch:

When the Head of the Charles Regatta comes around, Harvard locks down.

But 02138 would hear nothing of that last night. While its alma mater slept in, the new magazine dared to party. Hosted at Via Matta (owner: HBS grad), the Boston launch event saw no celebrity appearances, though alumni did abound. With a slew of Harvard affiliates from almost every school and year, the only demographic that could be pegged down were the “fallen type-As.” That is, those who prefer the company of anonymous fellow alumni to interaction with normal human beings.

No sightings of The Harvard 100, but one guest did purport to be number 101. He also claimed aspirations to his own publication, tentatively named after his mother, Bertha. I’d get the p.r. people working on that title if I was him.

“Do they teach awkwardness at Harvard, or do we just come this way?” I asked my companion after a forced conversation with an alum several generations removed. And here I thought Ivy League social disability was a recent development.

We spent the remainder of the evening downing mysteriously weak drinks and talking to the only other normal people in the room (relatively speaking). We met the acquaintance of pg. 20’s Republican “policy doctor” Lanhee Chen and introduced ourselves to three chicly dressed, refereshingly amiable staffers. Then we found out that two were Princeton-educated, the other a University of Wisconsin grad. That’s gotta explain it.

When the clock struck 9 p.m., we took a look around. Via Matta was, by now, a few guests short of a crowd. I thought the undergraduate social scene was lacking, but is this what life holds for us as alums?

Perhaps next week’s launch event in D.C. will be more hopping, but for the rest of the evening, I retreated to a more surefire good time: Happy hour at the Crimson.

Does anyone here own a shotgun? If so, could you get it to us by, say, next Friday?

A reader just forwarded us the following invitation for an upcoming Smirnoff promotional party at the Princeton Club, hosted by the Andover/Abbot Academy of New York. On Friday the 13th. We haven’t touched a word, much like we wouldn’t touch a grisly rape scene if we worked for CSI.

From Prep to Playa: Smirnoff Tea Partay for Young Alumni

Friday, October 13, 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

You’ve seen the Prep Unit video on You-Tube and now we’re going to raise the roof in the Princeton Club. That’s right, all you prepsta brothers and sisters, we’re having a Tea Partay. Every OP (Original Prepsta) is going to be there getting his swerve on, his dance on, his whale print belt, Nantucket Reds and Topsiders on and most definitely, his ice cold Smirnoff Raw Tea on. We’re going to have the Lemon, Peach and Raspberry flavas in effect ’cause that’s how we roll. So get ready to raise that Smirnoff Raw Tea, and let’s shake some ivy.
 
The cost for Andover alum is $20 per person, cash at the door.  Reservations are required. No walk-ins will be admitted.
RSVP by Wednesday, October 11 to
Wanda Mann ‘90 wanda@[redacted].com
 
Location: Princeton Club of New York, 15 West 43rd Street
(between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)

We don’t enjoy displaying this; it’s just our job. And yes, we will happily accept accomplices.