Maddox in action (via Princeton Athletic Communications)

It’s been a pretty quiet week in terms of Orange Bubble activity–with a few notable exceptions, which came from all over the high/lowbrow Princetonia spectrum.

First up, Princeton’s basketball star Kareem Maddox ‘11, who made waves with his stellar post-season performances against Harvard and Kentucky in March, has signed a one-year contract with Dutch team Landstede Basketbal, where Princeton’s assistant coach Craig Moore played in 2009-2010.  Maddox, who was named Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year for the 2010-2011 season, talked with the Princeton Packet about his unlikely path from the Ivy League to the European courts:

“I didn’t start thinking about it until junior year…Myself and Dan (Mavraides) thought we could go play overseas. We worked toward that effort. I didn’t realize it would happen like this. The year we had at Princeton got us exposure. Coaches were reaching out to us to play.  There’s no draft overseas; you’re reaching out to teams, and you have to give them game tapes and show them how your team did and your individual statistics…Having a good year where we meshed well and doing as well as we did helped us a lot with exposure.”

In other news, Princeton’s Annual Giving skyrocketed this year, with over $50 million in alumni contributions and a record-breaking participation rate of 61% from over 36,000 alums.  The Star-Ledger reported last weekend that the newly blazer-clad Class of 1986, which celebrated its 25th reunion in May, contributed over $9 million, the all-time record for any Princeton class.  Looks like Reunions works its magic yet again!

Last, but certainly not least, a new blog called The Ivy Leaker went Code-Orange viral this week, hitting eating club listservs, Facebook, and Twitter alike (and warranting a post over at The Prox late last week).  The blog, which tells the dramatic tale of a sophomore girl facing bicker at “the Cottage,” is written by an anonymous blogger who lists Gossip Girl as one of her major influences, and her posts don’t disappoint: they’re full of midnight meetings at Firestone, secret club handshakes at dawn, and perfectly-shaken cocktails made by guys with “lightly touseled dark hair” named Alejandro.  Sure, it’s not quite This Side of Paradise, but let’s face it: when summer cubicle life gets tedious, desperate times call for desperate measures, and this blog delivers unintentional comedy in spades.