he’s here to stop you from wearing a lame costume this year

Year after year, you find yourself scrambling through your closet for clothes you can hastily turn into a costume. Despite knowing exactly when Halloween happens every year and the fact that it happens, again, every year, you are never ready for it. While you could settle for some of the real horrors Columbia has faced this year, we suggest sparing us the peace of mind for the relevancy points. 

1. FIREFIGHTER: Plimpton and EC residents are all too familiar with the horrors of this one and even more terrified by what their presence means: the blaring of your fire alarm at 5 am. You could be a hot firefighter, but you could potentially bring back the unpleasant memories for some residents. Stay safe and respectful of some people’s traumatic 30-degree weather experiences.
2. UNION WORKER: The only people this would terrify is the respective administrations of Columbia and Barnard College. While generally supported by the student body, chanting “don’t break the line” at a party probably isn’t the greatest move. I would advise skipping this one for your own sanity. Negotiating the bureaucracy of unionization is a headache in and of itself.
3. DEVIL: Besides the fact that there will be no less than seven other costumed devils in your vicinity (known as the Basic Bitch Laws of Halloween), this job is occupied for most of the year by the person who keeps skipping you in the Ferris line, your roommate who uses 4 alarms in the morning, that person who took your laundry out of the dryer when it was still wet–you wouldn’t want to put them out of the job.
4. ORIENTATION LEADER: The most horrific part of this is being an actual orientation leader encountering your students in Mel’s. Though I promise, the feeling is mutual for your OL group. Can’t stop, please stop showing up to bars in your NSOP shirts. Find your groove somewhere else.
5. BACCHANAL PLANNING COMMITTEE: You will be hated for planning the event of the year. And although everyone will have an amazing time that they probably won’t remember, no one will ever be pleased with you. If you wanted to experience this level of disappointment, you would’ve just gone to your professor’s office hours after skipping four consecutive classes.

stoplight via Flickr

Northwest Corner Building, where the talk took place.

Staff Writer Ezra Lerner stopped by the Columbia University College Republicans’ latest speaker event on October 24. Although Mark Krikorian is less high-profile than other speakers the group has brought to campus, he used similar far-right rhetoric. 

In recent semesters, CUCR has been heavily criticized for inviting prominent far-right speakers, including Tommy Robinson, Ann Coulter, and Mike Cernovich. Mark Krikorian, the latest in this line, is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Although on the surface Krikorian seems more affable than the previous speakers, his talk was no less radical.

Krikorian presents himself as a reasonable person with reasonable methods for solving immigration problems, but he also seems to relish being cast as a villain by the left for his far-right ideas. One of those ideas, he explained, is drastically shrinking the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, who enter the United States. He chastised the United States for being too lenient towards immigrants who come with children, even after the family separation crisis over the summer. Krikorian also called for “detention centers,” if necessary, as a form of “hardball” designed to limit the influx of immigrants into the United States.

Krikorian did not limit himself to immigration. He criticized an undefined group of “elites” for being at times “post-American” and at times “anti-American.” He specifically mentioned the late historian Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, which focuses on U.S. history from the perspective of the nation’s oppressed peoples. Krikorian described it as “subversive” and “anti-American.”

Krikorian seemed crestfallen at the lack of outrage at his event. He frequently mentioned, unprompted, that he must be offending people and seemed disappointed that there were not more confrontational questions during the Q&A. At the end of the program, he agreed to stick around to give people plenty of time to debate him.

Photo via Bwog Archives

Words, words, words…

Managing Editor Betsy Ladyzhets loves Beat poetry and strong female characters. Naturally, she has a lot to say about NOMADS’ “The Other Side,” a new original musical by Eden Gordon (BC ’19), after attending the show’s first performance last night.

Two weeks ago, my American literature class read “Howl and Other Poems” by Allen Ginsberg. During one of our class discussions, Professor Vandenburg asked: Does Ginsberg’s verse exclude women? I raised my hand and said something like, “As someone who’s read Ginsberg’s entire biography and knows about his homosexuality and his tumultuous relationship with his mother, I think he’s just writing about his own experience, not anyone else’s, so I can forgive him for mostly leaving women out of it.”

After seeing NOMADS’ “The Other Side,” I now realize I was too kind. This production, a new musical by Eden Gordon, BC ’19, about two women left behind by the Beats Generation, delivers a raw, emotional picture of what happens when men preach unity while failing to practice it, driven by strong characters and gorgeous music.

In the first scene, self-described narrator, poet, and “wolf mother” Diane di Prima (Elli Furukawa, BC ’19) introduces the Beats and the “women who stood behind them”: Joyce Johnson (Taylor Faires-Cordona, BC ’19) and Elise Cowen (Daisy Mayer, BC ’22). Both women attended Barnard College in the 1950’s; Elise dropped out her junior year, while Joyce failed her graduation by one class. The musical, inspired by Joyce Johnson’s memoir Minor Characters, follows these two women from their experiences at Barnard, through their romantic involvement with prominent Beat poets (Elise with Allen Ginsberg, Joyce with Jack Kerouac), and into the early 1960s, concluding after Elise commits suicide in 1962. The women are close friends and their lives run in parallel to each other. Both of their relationships fail – Elise’s because Allen Ginsberg is homosexual, and Joyce’s because Jack Kerouac is an alcoholic who can’t manage to stay in one place – yet lingering attachments prevent the women from pursuing their own creative careers.

How was the acting? The music? The set?

me after seeing anything that even vaguely looks like a bug

It’s no secret that living in New York City can come with some unwelcome guests. Here are some of our best tips for how to give your freeloaders the boot. 

•  Sacrifice a muffin so the cockroach gods will have mercy on you.
• Move into Prezbo’s house.
• Move out of Prezbo’s house when you realize that no one is truly safe.
• Get a flamethrower. Burn down your dorm.
• Bring dragons. Reclaim what is yours with fire and cockroach-equivalent-of-blood.
• Charge them rent.
• Scream until your next-door neighbor comes over and DEMAND they kill it for you.
• Invite them to a cockroach soirée in the room next door.
• Snort pure boric acid so your very essence deters them.
• Take legal action.
• Downsize by attrition à la 12th Dynasty Pharaoh Senwosret III. Once they die, give their heirs cushy but ineffective jobs in the capital, isolating them from their power base. Gradually instate your own people to regain control of the nomes.
• Bring them fire and stone tools. Become their God.
•  Rent a zamboni and play the slowest game of tag ever.
• Cover it w/ a jar and leave it there to die because you are too terrified to do anything else.
• Construct a maze and force it to migrate to your suite mate’s room.
• Crush them with Merriam Webster’s Revised Biographical Dictionary.
• Show them pictures of dead cockroaches, as a warning.
• Move rooms. The cockroach will get lonely and leave, and then you can move back in.
• Just step on them.
• Evict them.
• Land mines.
• Get bigger cockroaches to use up their food.
• Bring in rats so they can fight to the death.
• And finally: just call an exterminator???

we’ve all been there via Bwog archives

Trying to outrun stress like…

If you’re lucky, midterms are over. If not, you still have to suffer through more of what really should be called unit exams. Either way, Sports Editor Abby Rubel is here with your weekly update on the happenings of Sports World.

Volleyball: Columbia (9-9, 3-5 Ivy) will take on Harvard (9-8, 4-4 Ivy) and Dartmouth (7-11, 3-5 Ivy) in road matches this weekend. Harvard is fourth, Columbia fifth, and Dartmouth sixth in the Ivy League. First-year Emily Teehan is second in the league in kills this season, with 210 (3.18 per game). She and teammate Kalie Wood tie for first in the Ivies in aces, with 25 apiece. Harvard dealt otherwise-undefeated Princeton their only defeat this season, and is third behind Columbia in aces. Dartmouth lost to Columbia earlier in the season, but is still tough defensively, ranking second in the Ivy League in blocks.

Cross Country: Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams will race this weekend at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships. The women’s race will start at 11:00 am, the men’s at 12:00 pm. On the men’s side, Brian Zabilski, Kenny Vasbinder, and Lucky Schreiner took three of the top nine spots last year, and will look to repeat their performance. Last season, the women’s team came first in the championships, but only two of their top seven finishers are returning this season. Seniors Libby Kokes and Erin Gregoire, who came in fourth and fifth at last week’s Princeton Invitational, will look to finish their last cross country at Columbia strong.

Men’s Soccer: The Lions (7-4-1, 3-1 Ivy) will play Yale (6-4-3, 1-1-2 Ivy) on Saturday at 1:00 pm in New Haven. In Ivy play, Columbia is tied with Cornell for second place—both teams have three wins, one loss. Princeton, in first place, is 3-0-1. (For non-sports people, that’s three wins, no losses, one tie.) Senior goalie Dylan Castanheira, who has played almost every minute this year, has the second lowest games against average in the Ivy League (.723) and four shutouts so far this season. On the offensive side, senior forward Kynan Rocks leads the team with four goals on the season.

Worst race ever via gocolumbialions.com

tbh don’t try this at home kids

Happening in the World: 56-year-old Alain Robert, more commonly known as the French Spider-Man, scaled one of London’s tallest buildings without safety gear in a total of 40 minutes. Robert was later arrested for causing a public nuisance (NY Times).

Happening in the US: Two middle school girls aged 11 and 12 from Florida are facing charges of conspiracy to kill their classmates as a part of a satanic ritual. Authorities discovered various weapons, such as a butcher’s knife, pizza cutter, and scissors. The girls had told investigators that they intended to drink the blood and eat the flesh of their victims  (BBC).

Happening in NYC: Tonight at 7 pm and 10 pm, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine will be hosting its annual Halloween Extravaganza. There will be a screening of Nosferatu (1922) with live organ accompaniment. After the film, you’ll get to see a procession of Ralph Lee and the Mettawee River Theater Company’s ghosts and ghouls!

Happening on Campus: Need a last minute costume for Halloweekend? Join Columbia Undergraduate Student Life and Columbia Undergraduate Fashion Society today in Lerner 515 from 12 to 3 pm! Crafting supplies and artistic guidance will be provided.

when life gets too hard, seek refuge in an elevator and draw yourself some whiskers

Overseen: My floormates sitting in an elevator for over an hour in an attempt to deal with midterm stress and celebrate Halloweekend at the same time.

sharp looking cleaver via Pixabay