Articles filed under “Fun”

The “summer jam” is certainly a cliché — the type of hymn or tune that can only come out of your tattered Jeep Wrangler or FJ Cruiser (for the modern, upper-middle class bohemian). But the “summer jam” — “summer song”, “sound of the summer,” whatever incarnation you please — is one of those weighty clichés that actually means something. At least in the case of the noteworthy professors so many of us students neglect throughout the year due to schedule and (more likely) due to fear, one’s choice of summer jam gives some gritty emotional information that normally takes serious office hours to uncover.

We asked some of Princeton’s most revered intellectuals for their summer jams. Though it took almost an entire summer to compile — you weren’t the only ones doing nothing — they are finally listed below. Think of this almost-mixtape as an ode to the last hurrah that is Princeton’s awkwardly pushed back start date.

ProfessorialMixtapePic (Version 2)

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In the wake of the procrastination extravaganza that was the Dean’s Date Liveblog, we here at The Ink feel a little guilty about our unintentional, but, we fear, effective, complicity in achieving the grade deflation quotas.

There's a reason the logo is orange.

There's a reason the logo is orange.

Sadly, we can’t do much to help you out with that orgo final. But we can help you bone up on your Princeton knowledge, and maybe rekindle the trivia love that got us on Sporcle’s top 25 colleges last semester.

Quiz time!

1) How many pizzas were consumed at the dodgeball tournament? How many free t-shirts?

2) What’s the farthest spot from campus Princeton’s flag flies?

3) The first Ivy Leaguers to make the cover of Sports Illustrated were from Princeton. Which team took the honor, and in what year?

4) Which Princeton building lent its name to a chemical reaction?

5) What hidden message is embedded in the bricks of the computer science building?

Or maybe the bricks are just slowly falling out?

Or maybe the bricks are just slowly falling out?

6) The statues outside Nassau Hall weren’t always tigers. Who brought them to campus, and what did they replace?

7) When was the last Cannon Green bonfire? When will it happen again?

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What’s your weapon of choice?

Next time that annoying kids pokes you on Facebook, you'll have just the thing to retaliate

Next time that annoying kids pokes you on Facebook, you'll have just the thing to retaliate

1) Butterbeer Genuine Draft

2) The One Onion Ring to Rule Them All

3) Voldemort’s Nose

Wait … say what?

These are among the pop culture-related food items that you can chuck at online friends and enemies alike in Foodie Fight, a new Facebook game launched this month by Campusfood.com. Students accumulate points by inviting friends and hitting their targets with gastronomical items, and lose points by hitting bystanders. These virtual points can then be cashed in for Campusfood coupons.

UPenn-graduate Michael Saunders, the founder and president of Campusfood.com, has said of the game:

“We’re very excited to launch the new Facebook application – a perfect fit with our customer’s interests. The “Foodie Fight” is more than a form of entertainment, it’s a way to give back to our valued customers. With this new game, we expect to target our frequent users as well as engage those unfamiliar with the site.”

Campusfood.com allows students to browse online menus and order food from local restaurants, even allowing them to pay for the entire order and tip through credit card. Plus, they deliver orders straight to your dorm room in 30 minutes to an hour. It has expanded to over 390 colleges in the U.S., including Princeton, and is a division of the world’s largest restaurant network, Dotmenu, which recently celebrated its 16 millionth order.

So in short: Facebook procrastination, earning money, and eating well. Just what you needed for finals, right?

O, Lawnparties. For the Street-going masses, it’s been something of a marathon weekend, but provided you get to Sunday in one piece (and with liver intact), you’ll enjoy some solid tunes on Prospect Avenue. You’ve got your usual slew of heinous cover bands, but there are also few gems. Here are the acts to keep an eye on.

Here is the first Google result for Lawnparties.

Here is the first Google result for "Lawnparties"

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Spotted: The next Christopher Walken look-alike lurker.

Spotted: The next Christopher Walken lookalike lurker.

Is it just me, or is Princeton the campus of choice for strange lurers and public wankers?

From today’s Campus Safety Alert:

A graduate student reported late last evening that a man exposed himself while she was running on the tow path between Harrison Street and Washington Road at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, 2011.

Maybe we’re the only school that takes public indecency as a serious campus-wide safety threat. But here’s something else I noticed about the “crime prevention tips” section of Public Safety’s emails (thanks LW ‘14):

  • When running in isolated areas, run with a friend.
  • Stay alert and tuned in to your surroundings. Be aware and prepared.
  • Stand tall and walk confidently; do not show fear.
  • Trust your instincts, and if you do not feel comfortable in a place or situation, leave.

Wait, are we dealing with flashers or mountain lions? (Seriously, compare the list of Mountain Lion Safety Tips to Public Safety’s. The resemblance is uncanny.)

Some additional safety tips substituting the word “cougar” with “creeper” after the jump.

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By the grace of the calendar gods, my Princeton Preview weekend happened to include April 24th, the holiday known as Newman’s Day. When I was just a wee prefrosh I watched my host’s roommate scrawl a Sharpie tally on his forearm for every beer he drank, hoping to get to two dozen by the day’s end, as per that (apocryphal) Paul Newman quote: “24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not.”

So this Sunday was the third time I witnessed (though not observed) this annual Princeton tradition. And despite the ideal weather conditions, it seemed a bit quieter than usual. I heard murmurings on the listservs, saw a spattering of Newman’s Day tanks, read a couple of amusing Facebook statuses. But no one staggering around visibly drunk, and no one sporting more than a modest few notches on the arm. Why so tame?

Beast: now served in pleasantly colored eggs

1. Could’ve just been the unfortunate pairing of holidays — it was Easter, so maybe the resurrection of Christ cast a pall over the beer-funneling fun? Nope, that just forced people to find creative ways to combine the two festivities: at Tower, members hunted down Easter eggs with jello shots inside.

2. Or perhaps people realized that Newman himself was “disturbed” by the holiday in his name? Or they deemed the celebration of excess a bit distasteful in light of his son’s 1978 drug overdose, and had second thoughts right as they were about to shotgun that can of Coors Light? This seems unlikely.

Just as I was walking to the weekly UPC meeting, thinking that the day had not lived up to its usual standard, I spotted a guy peeing on the walkway outside 1901, barely even trying to conceal the act. Public urination, that proud badge of college inebriation. Though I missed out on the obvious signs, the holiday clearly continues to live on: Paul Newman, you may now resume rolling in your grave.

So yesterday, I was walking up the stairs of Blair Arch with a few friends when we started hearing strains of drumming and yelling in the distance. There was cheering and some singing, and I could definitely feel a heavy bass.

But it was also 6 p.m., pretty early for anyone to start pregaming (not that we expect anyone to, since Newman’s Day on Sunday should be more than enough for everyone to handle this weekend). Preview ended last week, so it couldn’t be the band trying to impress the prefrosh. Was there some kind of carnival we didn’t know about? An early soundcheck for Communiversity/Lawnparties/REUNIONS (!)?

Nope. “Surprised” barely captures how I felt when we finally made it through the arch and saw this:

Sophomore passerby: "Whoa, I should ask them to help me dress for the Cap theme tonight!"

Sophomore passerby: "Whoa, I should ask them to help me dress for the Cap theme tonight!"

We’d walked in on an apparently newly-formed spring tradition, the Princeton Powwow! Native Americans at Princeton (NAAP) set up the event, complete with two hired drum circles, smoke dancing, Iroquois jewelry, crafts and free Native American stew with fried bread. There was a guy on a mic calling everyone to jump in the tent and get in on the circle dances, a few stalls selling handicrafts, and a bunch of intrigued bystanders. The closest I’d ever been to a powwow before this was basically when I watched Peter Pan as a kid, so I took the chance to ask the powwow people (powwowers? powwowians?) what all this meant.

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Yes, we really get that into it.

Yes, we really get that into it.

Let’s be honest, Princeton. We were never the super-athletes growing up. We liked the library, not P.E. We were nerds, and proud of it. We were also always the last ones picked in gym, no matter what sport, and apparently we never really got over it.

Dodgeball, according to the sport’s eminent authority Patches O’Houlihan, is “a sport of violence, exclusion, and degradation” that was basically designed to let stronger, more athletic, more popular kids humiliate the average elementary school-aged future Princetonian.

You’d think the mere sight of one of those red rubber balls would send us scurrying off in the other direction. Actually touching one ought to undo years of therapy.

But every year, we conquer our fears at Colosseum Club’s dodgeball tournament, because, as nerds among nerds, it’s finally our turn to be the gym class heroes. Sure, we could act like the adults we theoretically are and “rise above” our childhood torment. Instead we spend a night living out our fifth-grade fantasies.

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Walking around campus at night, you see the typical sights: darkened trees, the occasional raccoon … and, you know, Justin Bieber staring at you motionlessly from the 3rd floor of Spelman 7.

A campus trend of late is to put stunningly lifelike cardboard cut outs of gossip.com’s favorite male heartthrobs in dorm windows, turn on the room lights when night falls and let the silhouettes do their creepy business.  Our current cardboard residents include Robert Pattinson adorned with a delightful mustache and delightfully menacing eyebrows, Anderson Cooper dressed in a snazz-tastic power suit and our love Justin Bieber frozen in his oh-so dashing hands-in-pocket shrug.

Pictures?  Why, of course.

Butler College: 1915 Hall, 4th Entry Way, 1st Floor

I wonder how Bella feels about those brows.

I wonder how Bella feels about those brows.

Whitman: Lauritzen Hall, 2nd floor

Power tie!

Power tie!

Spelman 7, 3rd floor, across from building with the STARCRAFT sign

At least in this case we know why his hair doesn't move

At least in this case we know why his hair doesn't move

So, who’s going to be next on our cardboard mancrush list?

I’m thinking this guy.

I was one of those kids in elementary school. The ones that the librarian knew by name. The ones who won all the Accelerated Reader prizes. The ones that skipped out on recess for Redwall, Mrs. Frisby, Wayside School, Omri, Pippi Longstocking and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The best day of my 4th grade year was one time when the librarian sponsored a trip for the top readers in our class to go to Barnes & Noble, gave each of us an $80 budget and set us free to pick out whatever books we wanted (!) for the school library (okay, I think I ended up spending my $80 on a series about unicorns … not the best literature, but whatever. I was 10).

"Get ready to, like, totally GREEK out!" - Cotsen's Princyclopedia blurb

"Get ready to, like, totally GREEK out!" - Cotsen's Princyclopedia blurb

This weekend, my fellow Newbery Medal devotees have cause to rejoice: the Cotsen Children’s Library is hosting Princyclopedia on Saturday, the annual event where Dillon Gym gets transformed into the universe of a children’s book. Each year, the library picks a different book and brings it to life – so for about 5 hours, you get to actually live in the world of Hogwarts, Wonderland, Agrabah, or wherever that year’s story may be set. Basically, it’s a children’s literature lover’s wildest dream come true.

So what’s the theme this year? Classics majors, this one’s for you. Cotsen is bringing ancient Greece to Dillon, based on the book The Lightning Thief, part of Rick Riordan’s popular Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I actually haven’t read any of these books, but just hearing about the planned events got me excited: The Bent Spoon is making nectar and ambrosia ice cream. Grad students from the Philosophy department are manning a Socratic table. A professional harpist and group of Spartan warrior re-enactors are performing. The Plasma Physics Lab scientists are literally bringing lightning with plasma balls and a dancing lightning bolt demonstration. And there’ll be free rides on a mechanical bull Minotaur.

Awesome? I think yes.

According to SVC emails, it may not be too late to sign up for volunteering at the event. Shifts are from 7:30-9:30, 10-12:30, 12:30-3:00, or 3:00-5:00. Email elemoine@princeton.edu for info. Or if you can’t commit to helping out, just stop by at some point between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday. It’s free, and you get to watch little kids lose themselves in the magic of a book that they love. What more could you ask for?

More elementary school nostalgia and Princyclopedia anticipation at the Princeton Echo.

Here’s some video we shot of the Class of 2011 Woody Woo seniors running into the fountain on Tuesday after turning in their senior theses. Enjoy, but keep in your thoughts those seniors who woke up at 7 am today to sit in the basement of Firestone or bike down to Icahn… who still have a few weeks to go.

Screen shot 2011-04-03 at 9.46.04

The lights were on at Cannon Club today, another sign this year’s revival attempt is the real deal. That or it’s haunted. Given the epic Cannon lore (see G. 3.), I’d say it’s a toss-up.

Thanks to Mary Balzer ‘13 for the photo.