Yeah the jokes in the beginning sort of fall flat after five years, and the soundtrack is just too much, but the basic concept is gold. The concept, you ask? Get a keg of O'Douls non-alcoholic beer and throw an impromptu "keg party" in the 1903 courtyard. Sobriety ensues.

There's really no rationale for posting this video other than its arrival in our inbox and its tenuous association with Dartmouth University (College?).

Enjoy!

After posting Harvard '09 Peter Shields' -- excuse me, Petros' -- boy band jam "Body Glow," we received tips on Yale Television's latest self-promotional clip, a jazzy little ditty entitled "Watch YTV" where we learn that Asian males continue to be the easiest punchline in entertainment, and someone named Andy Wexler has a micropenis. Also, fat kids like eating brownies and have surprisingly angelic falsetto voices.

UPDATE: It has come to our attention that the above video might not be an actual YTV production, in which case the above singing tele-ddicts are straight-up nutjobs, and YTV should probably hire them, stat. Our attempt to visit YTV's website revealed a massive relaunch project. Maybe this is all a guerrilla marketing scheme to create buzz while we anxiously await the YTV relaunch -- and IvyGate has fallen right into YTV's greedy, ratings-grubbing, anonymous-YouTube-launching hands!! I feel so used. But at least I have a catchy tune to hum.

We bring you the “Body Glow” video from international music sensation “Petros,” a.k.a. Peter Shields, Harvard ’09.  Well, he’s not really an international sensation, though we’ve gotten several emails telling us this video is all the rage in Cambridge these days.

The song is quite un-good and the video has this fake-Catholic guilt thing going on (come on, Petros, America is so over that) as Petros and his cohort rub glittery sweat all over each other and the girl has some kind of bloodied seizure and then goes to a church and then – hey! – there’s Petros like half taking off his shirt at the beach and all this interspliced with gratuitous Catholic imagery and medium-okay looking Harvard girls trying as hard as they can to dance and – wait! – at minute 1:30 the girl touches the back of her head only to find Petros’ jizzum!

With the production values of a third-string mid-90’s R&B music video as choreographed by a third-string college dance company, the whole thing is pretty strange. The problem with shooting a music video at Harvard is that you have to use Harvard girls, who even at their prettiest aren’t exactly booty-shaking material.

“Petros” is obviously self-obsessed (his Facebook profile includes many, many links to his successes; according to himself, his main job right now is “marketing this hot chick named Brandi Carlile” but he seems more into marketing and linking to himself than to Ms. Carlile) but I still sort of wish him luck. You’ve got to hand it to “Petros”: “Body Glow” took effort, ambition, and a total lack of shame.  And it’s only bad in the way that most cultural output is bad. It’s not specifically Harvard bad. Carry on, Peter. Carry on.

Hal, Jacob and I are still new on the job, so what better time to get to know each other better! In an effort to increase transparency, I'm going to run through a quick demonstration of how we kill time on slow news days, such as today. Then it's your turn to tell us something personal about you, then we're BFFAE.

Content is always only a few keystrokes away. Follow this simple formula to be an asshole blogger:

1. Find something that is irritating and ubiquitous in the Ivy League. A capella!

2. What Ivy League school have you not written much about? Brown!

3. Find the point where (1) and (2) might intersect. YouTube!

4. Since every answer to (3) is YouTube, search (1) + (2) and click on one of the first four videos. "a capella brown," e.g.

5. Post result of (4) to IvyGate. Spin that shit:

I really, really hate a capella. Now you know something about me!

There's nothing quite like watching white people getting down, especially when it's a white person other than yourself. To set the scene: it's Princeton Lawnparties, and Ghostface Killah has sold his soul to appear. Some very white people are doing some very silly dancing.

A warning: you will never again feel true peace of mind rolling down your hood and blasting Dre's 2001. But it's worth it. We promise.

Randomly assembled young people participate in a social experiment that is without any clear value or purpose. Just like college. But one has to question the wisdom of the falling gag at a school famous for its students plunging into gorges.

"Today we're going to show you how to make the new and improved avant-garde PB&J sandwich."

"Put your hand into da jelly and get some jelly and put it in your hair...like gel."

Similarly, are you bored right now, or the most bored you've ever been? If the latter, we've got some primo cinema for you. Cornell student Oliver Bundy made a quick documentary--nay, a requiem in four parts--last year about the Cornell Daily Sun. Considering his atrocious subject matter, Bundy's assembled a rather watchable piece. One of the subjects getting a lot of face time is Michael Morisy of IvyGate guest-editing fame. Luckily Morisy doesn't say anything stupid, so we're not obligated to make fun of him.

Our favorite segment is the second, where arts editor Alex Linhardt (maybe the same who writes for Pitchfork?) talks about six-year-old girls getting upset by the Sun's depiction of "fellatio," and when the production manager (Cornell '74) says "The writing has definitely declined... over the past 30 years. ... Ask professors they'll tell you the same thing." Hey old man, just whose side are you on?

Four segments of life at a college newspaper after the jump (about 15 minutes total).

Read the rest of this entry »

Our maligned guest stint has come to a close, ladies and gentlemen (we can hear you cheering already), and we're happy to say that it's been grand. We hope we were able to keep you from falling asleep during office meetings, at the very least.

They say it's dull in the summertime, but our two weeks has seen its fair share of scandalicious stories: Caroline Giuliani and Lucy Morrow Caldwell went head to head, the Ivy nerds took revenge, Hillary Clinton showed how she answered the voice crying in the wilderness, Yale's Beta Theta Pi fraternity went the way of the dodo, the Daily Pennsylvanian took heat from one of its own, a four-person crowd of fire-breathing bigots took Ithaca by storm and Cornell was simultaneously voted best and worst motto in all of academia.

(Oh, a few more things: sex, Kazakhs, gambling, MBAs, crime, snobbery, harassment and idiocy.)

So from the bottom of our hearts:

Andrew Nusca: We asked you to bring the comments on, and you brought it. It's been a pleasure to carry the torch for Nick and Chris whilst they tanned on the beach (or drank in the bar), and working with Newell these last two weeks was like enjoying a fresh hoagie from Wawa or a wiz-topped cheesesteak on South Street: nothing short of rewarding. I'll take this opportunity to sign off with my original greeting: Cheerio, fuckers!

Jim Newell: Thank you for reading our stuff. I've enjoyed building loving/hateful relationships with certain commenters. Andrew Nusca for president. And if for some inexplicable reason you want to get in touch with me, or you've got about 27k + benefits to throw away, I can be reached at newell.jim@gmail.com. Let the hate mail begin!

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate a pick-me-up to poor Caroline Giuliani. We all have bad stretches, Caroline. Don't be ashamed to cry it out. It's not unusual at all:

Be nice to the next guest editors and TIP THEM (ivygate.guest@gmail.com)! 

Always,

Jim Newell & Andrew Nusca