As Bwog dragged our weary old feet out of Hamilton today, we saw three adorable lil’ rascals climbing the big tree over Hamilton lawn. They were a heart-warming bunch to say the least. Note abandoned bicycles and scooters at the bottom of the tree. Climb on, comrades!

Photo by AB

Bwogger Anish Bramhandkar started his year off right by heading up to the 12th floor of Mudd to catch a few minutes of Disney/Pixar’s Monsters Inc., spotted on one of those ubiquitous flatscreens.  Why is SEAS spending its considerable brainpower on kids’ movies?  Bramhandkar suggests the display is designed to convince freshman engineers that fun stuff happens in Gateway.  Let’s hope so.

Bwog’s Associate Child Wrangler and Grassy Median Monitor Austin Brauser spotted a small person hiding in the brush on College Walk.

Are the British back?  Is he a CUAssassin? 

Don’t be alarmed – he’s probably just defending himself from stressed-out Columbians.

After the jump: Young person threatens cameraman. Read more…

This egg donor thing sounds a lot harder than it ought to be.

HAnSoN!!1!?!?!!1!1111omg 

News from a neophyte 

Headwear for the Spence set 

Beats Turkey 

In Russia, does Gary Shteyngart read you? 

There is the most mouth-watering fundraiser out on College Walk right now, thrown by the (mostly) women of the Columbia Greenhouse Nursery School. Cupcakes, cookies, muffins–it’s like the platonic ideal of a bake sale!

There’s also a sign for “Apple Day,” which apparently happened over the weekend, but which we think should happen every day anyway.

If you’re trying to study in Butler right now, you probably already know that there’s a giant children’s reading party going on out on the lawns–it’s part of the Times-sponsored Great Children’s Read, and a zillion tiny people have turned out to ensnare you on your way to midterms purgatory.

If you’re able to escape, They Might Be Giants are going on at 3:10 PM. And meanwhile, there’s a certain amount of schwag to be had, including those delicious little greek yogurts.

Update, 2:15pm: The view from a Butler denizen: 

Adorable photos of frolicking children the jump.

Read more…

Tipster Mariela Quintana, who volunteers at Park Slope’s 826nyc (a tutoring endeavor of Dave Eggers & Co., and previously featured on Bwog for its Superhero Supply Store), was kind enough to pass along a link to a new blog, “Fish Slaps A Baby,” started and run by their elementary-school-age students. Here you’ll read on such topics as

Rock Jellyfish!

Rock Hot Dogs!

Penguins! 

Bwog is ever-so-pleased. Pleased enough to plug their excellent opportunities to volunteer as well. Plus, you can tell your friends that, in four years in New York, you managed to visit another borough at least once.  

— ZvS

For those of you still in need of your last fill of summer, Broadway is brimming with the capitalist and culinary delights of a street fair. And for those unfortunate enough to be holed up in Butler this early in the semester, here’s Bwog’s best attempt to convince you to go outside for some fresh air.

There’s no $1 Thai food in Blue Java. Not even the new Blue Java.

Read more…

Bwog editor emerita Sara Vogel bumped into Jon Scieszka, one of her childhood heroes, on 112th street and Broadway a few weeks ago. When she found out that the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, and the Time Warp Trio series got his Master’s at Columbia in the late 70′s, she took down his number, and followed up. He’s planning a new series about trucks and books about a cowboy and an octopus, and he’s on the board of 826NYC – for all of you non-McSweeneyites, the tutoring center disguised as the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Here Scieszka muses about kindergarteners, coming up with Borat way before Sasha Cohen, and why he’s second best to Roald Dahl.

So sorry I accosted you on the street the other day.

No, I thought that was kind of funny.

Does that happen to you a lot, where you get people recognizing you and stopping you on the street?

Not so much. But I was out in Arizona on a book tour and one little guy asked me if I had security. Like he was wondering if I had a body guard or something. I said, “No, most people don’t even know what I look like.” Except there’s this whole little crew of kindergarteners that I was working with last year that will wave to me on the street and go, “Hi Jon Scieszka.” And their parents will go, “Who was that guy? Who are you talking to?”

Why were you working with kindergarteners?

I’m actually working on this pre-school project where I’ve thought up this whole world called ‘Trucktown’ where all the characters are trucks. I definitely needed to get into the classroom to see what four-year-olds are like.

What’d you learn?

Mostly that kindergarteners are like little guys with Alzheimer’s on acid. They are nuts, man. It’s like the world is completely reinvented for them every fifteen minutes. Any kind of parody or satire, which is what I really enjoy writing, just is way beyond them. Since the world is so brand new every fifteen minutes, you can’t really make fun of it. They don’t even know what the rules are for the regular world. We were in there for Saint Patrick’s Day and the teacher was telling them, “Oh, well if you don’t wear green, the Leprechaun is going to come around and pinch you” and immediately half the kids looked really worried. They thought “oh no, I don’t have green on, I’m going to get pinched!” Read more…

Professor Karl Kroeber is restless of mind, the sort of academic who likes pioneering new fields and then abandoning them. The loquacious and sagacious fellow, brother to Ursula Kroeber Le Guin [see right], currently teaches the ever-popular children’s lit course. He talked to us about growing up, “the business of imagining,” why he hates Disney, coming to terms with cancer, the Navy, and just about everything else.

BW:  You keep your robes on your coat-rack?

Kroeber: You never know when I might have to rush out and prove I’m an academic.

Can you tell us how you ended up here?

My father… was an academic in the 19th century. And I came to Columbia- I grew up in California- at the end of the second war. I was in the Navy.

I was [also] a radio announcer; I came to New York, went to a little school and got a job out in Iowa. I got pretty good at it, and I came back to New York because this is where you had to go (this is about ’49-’50). I got into an interesting situation, a very lucky situation. Being a radio announcer is not hard work; it’s very easy if you’re glib like I am and have a California accent and most of the people [in the business] are drunks and I could go ahead… But, I said, “there’s nothing in this life for me.”

Congratulations on the semi-centennial of your PhD. [This year marks the 50th anniversary of Kroeber's doctorate.]

(Laughs) I’ve been around a long time. I had a job out in Wisconsin, at Madison, for 15 years. Lovely place, swell place to bring up kids and all that. We had a beautiful house in Madison. Next to [University of California at] Berkeley, it was the place that had the most trouble in the 60s. This was a school that admitted four thousand freshmen a year and they eliminated freshman composition. You couldn’t teach there. I had to come back here, and I had three kids. We didn’t want to live in the suburbs. My wife’s a sculptor- you can’t sculpt in an apartment. We bought a brownstone in Brooklyn for a few thousand dollars. Best investment I think I ever made.

Read more…

EC Security guard, after smiling kindly to a woman whose child had been rampaging wildly through the security room:

“I just wanna get down there and [slaps his hands together] that shit…God I hate her…” [continues as tipster makes his escape]

In front of Avery:

“I mean just because she’s Jewel’s sister doesn’t mean she can get away with murder!!”

Thanks tipsters Chris Szabla and S Alex Kudroff

In its typical stalker fashion, Bwog followed a group of children this afternoon, fascinated by their caretakers’ kid control technique. What would happen if we tugged the string? 

The leaders, apparently, have a better way of dealing with differently-minded youngsters.

“S-T-O-P everyone! Someone got a flat tire,” one said, and the line came to a halt. Would that 18-22 year olds were as easy to direct…

 

Some of the delightful things Bwog has seen around the neighborhood on this pleasant, balmy Saturday:

People on 110th street were loading these marked boxes into a big truck.On closer inspection, the boxes turned out to be penny harvest kits. Sixth grade fundraiser anyone?

And some kids were playing leap frog outside John Jay dining hall. Said one “too cool for school” boy disdainfully, to his juvenile  peers: “Come on, you are fifth and fourth graders!”

116th and Amsterdam may never have seen this many farm animals since, well, there were farms here. Throw in picnic food, facepainting, raffles, toy and clothes sales, and one giant inflatable firetruck, and you might just forget about that 20-page paper due on Monday.

Sorry for reminding you. More photos after the jump.

Read more…

Curious about the flock of kids gathered on Low Steps right now? Bwog inquired: it’s a group of seventh graders from Houston, TX touring the East Coast. They hit Philadelphia on the way here, and then will make their way up to Boston.

Be nice! Welcome our Southern brethren!