After the overwhelming success of last night’s snowball fight, more groups are trying to extend the winter joy for another night. After all, tonight’s Primal Scream provides pretty much the perfect war cry for the start of another battle royale. One Facebook group is here, while tipsters tell us there will also be an aerial battle across 114th Street between Ruggles and John Jay. Good luck, warriors.

- Photo by HEH

During our time at Columbia, most of us meet one or two group leaders, student government presidents, star athletes, and the like. But there are many Columbians whose profiles are lower, yet their talents are just as (or even more) awesome. Here’s our recurring feature devoted to those students, starting with Anna Cooperberg-Gonzalez, aka “that girl twisting herself into a pretzel outside Butler.”

While sitting around bored and restless, Anna Cooperberg-Gonzalez, CC ’12, likes to stretch. Except, as she puts it, “when I do it … it’s a little more extreme than usual.” Anna, it so happens, is a student of circus arts, namely aerial fabrics (twisting about in the air) and contortion (twisting about anywhere). In her youth, she found herself compulsively drawn to the monkey bars, to anything that she could climb, swing from, and snake about, really. So naturally when she happened to attend the Independent Lake Camp in the summer after 7th grade, originally intending to practice dance and do some zip-lining, she fell in love with the camp’s fabric climbing programs.

Now, after years of trapeze and fabrics and contortions, Anna is basically an elastic girl, and it is in her nature to stretch, bend, twist, and scurry up long pieces of fabric to perform absurd gymnastic routines. Indeed, it is so much a part of her soul, her drive, that as we speak she casts an eye up to the ceiling of the Butler lounge. I ask her if she’s thinking of scaling the wall and swinging about from the lights. She keeps her eyes to the ceiling, cogs spinning in her head, and absentmindedly replies: “I always look to see if I could rig a fabric up in a room. Yeah, this room is no good. I wouldn’t swing from the lights. It’s just not safe.” Read more…

At around 11:45, eager pillow-bearers began to congregate on the Butler lawn for the 4th annual Primal Scream/Pillow Fight, which this year featured over a hundred combatants. One claimed to have “stretched all day for this,” while several others wore capes. At about a minute before midnight, the two sides charged screaming towards each other, much to the amusement of the spectators who ventured from their campsites in Butler.

Though at first two sides charging at each other like some medieval melee, the fight quickly broke down to every man and woman for themselves. Warriors quickly adopted the language of the battlefield, including cries of “push him into the bushes and hit him,” “come and get me,” and “we don’t negotiate with terrorists!”

The fun did not begin to die down for almost twenty minutes, before many of the combatants slumped down on the grass. As one tired observer said, “I’ve never seen so many people willing to beat the shit out of each other.” Photo album after the jump. Read more…

- An eager crowd awaits the band’s entrance

If you missed Orgo Night, fret not – the show was recorded and will be available tomorrow on CUMB’s blog. Now, the Bwog review:

After entering to the usual “Roar Lion Roar,” the Columbia University Marching Band noted that, due to the recession, this year’s show would be sponsored by the Columbia University Show. “We also thank the Varsity Show,” a band member opined, “for lowering expectations for the past 35 years.” As the Hillel-distributed stress balls flew in the air over the spectators (one eventually landing in a tuba sousaphone), many were still looking for seats, but the band told them not to worry: “if you can’t hear the jokes, there’ll be plenty seats open by intermission.”

Thus began one of the best Orgo Nights in recent memory, though, in typical marching band fashion, some of the jokes skirted the edge of tastefulness. Surprisingly, the end of the election and the departure did not dampen the band’s taste for political humor- the first two segments focused on Ann Coulter (simply described as “fucking crazy” and Fox News respectively (with “Beat It” and “More Than A Feeling” mixed in), and mostly had fun at “Coultergeist’s” expense, including asking “If she thinks kindergartners are being taught fisting in kindergarten, what are they being taught in high school? Read more…