Movie Man Mark Hay is back, with a vengeance.

A few days ago, a Columbia professor up and decked a female co-worker in the face. Totally uncalled for, totally unexpected, and totally scintillating violence. Somehow, as a result, your reviewer has spent the past week arguing the relative merits of violence in film and the qualifications of what makes a good gore-fest with just about anyone who will hear him out. And thus Bwog presents a list of films featuring totally unexpected violence, which are themselves totally unexpectedly good.

Murderball (2005)

If not for some explicit content, your reviewer would recommend that this film be shown in schools the nation over – it is one of the most handi-capable messages ever recorded to film. An unexpected treat shot on a low budget (and with a strange, but marvelous soundtrack) by directors Henry Rubin and Dana Shapiro, Murderball treats as its subjects a group of quadriplegic wheelchair-rugby (known as “murderball” for the utter brutality it involves) players and does so in a way that is absolutely non-exploitative. With the ideal bluntness and distance of a documentary, it explores every facet of handicapped life that one would fear to ask a stranger – sex, self-hatred, misery, phantom pain, and just getting around. But, as with most documentary gems, Murderball is most memorable for those human moments, transcending the sport and the facts of like without limbs, against all probability captured on film.

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Hawkmadinebwog is no prophet, but either Odysseus is getting ready to slaughter Penelope’s suitors, or the red-tails are out for spring! Several people wrote in yesterday to tell us that a juvenile red-tail was hanging around Hamilton and Low until catching his meal and dropping feathers on the passers-by of College Walk.

Hawkmadinebwog is not skilled enough in field identification to tell individual red-tails apart, but it is easy enough to know whether a bird is a juvenile or an adult. These hawks do not get their red tail until their second year, so a brown, striped tail means it is a juvy. The hawk we have been calling “Hawkmadinejad” is an adult, most likely one of the mates of St. John’s. Hawkmadinebwog supports the continued use of the name Hawkmadinejad for any adult red-tail that dares to venture, like a controversial international speaker, onto our campus. But we should probably come up with another name for the babies. Baby Hawkma, perhaps?

Post your own suggestions in the comments, and see more pictures of the hawk and its meal after the jump.

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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…

(Hi Gothamist!)

After spending much of the day on upper campus, Hawkmadinejad finally caught her lunch on the South Lawn. The catch was not quite so dramatic as the last time we saw her dine at Columbia, but the pictures are still pretty excellent. The creature was too small to be a squirrel, and hawkmadinebwog struggled to get a clear picture of her prey. Hawkmadinejad dropped some of the critter’s organs into the hedge below her. Help us identify the annihilated critter from its organs, or prophecy for us if you are a haruspex.

Plenty more pictures after the jump, and on Douds’ facebook page.

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Avian tipster extraordinaire Courtney Douds has sent along the following absolutely insane photos of your Hawkmadeinjad ruthlessly tearing into her* prey outside Math today. 

* Douds also points out that “this red-tail is of a size that makes her more likely to be female, since female raptors tend to be about a third larger than their male counterparts.”

Hawkmadinejad is a crazy person. More evidence after the jump and on Douds’ Facebook page.

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Right this minute, on the lawn in front of John Jay, the hawk that’s been spotted near Lewisohn and the LLC is lunching on a pigeon.  It swooped down and snatched it in dramatic fashion.  Onlookers, please send in your photos and stories.  Bored studiers, please suggest names for our hawk.  Apparently, they’re territorial, so he/she may be around for a while.

- ACM

The cruel cycle of nature continues–right in front of Lewisohn! Writes a tipster:

“Just at noon (right now!) I saw a GIANT hawk in front of the sculpture facing Lewisohn, chowing down on some small animal.  It’s neat to see real wild life in the city.”

And it’s neat to see such fitting metaphors for our transient, fragile and ever-so-vulnerable state of existence unfolding before our very eyes. Have a nice day everyone!

Not content with battling it out in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, the Ivies are throwing it down by way of that most gentlemanly of pastimes: war! Or rather, inter-campus computerized simulations of games that simulate war! Kind of!

Our buddies at GoCrossCampus have organized an Ivy League championship. While Columbia hasn’t won a single outright basketball or football championship in the League, we all know that cross-country Risk is the glamour sport of the future. So take up arms, Columbians! Let our arrows blot out the sun! We’ll make Princeton pine for 1777! Hoohah!

-ARR

With Fair Alma’s ritual disembowelment of the hapless Penn Quakers a mere five days away, the Columbia College senior class decided to celebrate homecoming week with a little pugilism of its own. With Decolonization day going at full thrust less than 20 yards in front of them, the CC seniors lined up for some BBQ–with a little whipped cream and raw hatred on the side.

To passerby, it probably didn’t seem like a spectacular orgy of violence was in store: CC ’08 representatives handed out a facebook of pie victims, complete with short bios (our favorite: “Calvin Sun, Vice President of the Senior Class etc…is incredibly terrified of messing up his hair today.”) while 08ers politely queued for chicken wings and baked beans. But no amount of meticulous organization could quell the participants’ bloodlust: Head Dem Josh Lipsky speculated that GOP counterpart Chris Kulawik was afraid of getting hurt. “I’m here and he’s not,” said Lipsky. “You do the math.” (he wasn’t the only one calling out the CUGOP’s high-profile leader: one speaker on Low urged people to organize against David Horowitz before decrying the “hypocrisy of Chris Kulawik”).

Meanwhile, Spec boss John Davisson was disapointed at the Blue and White’s no-shows–”I don’t see Taylor Walsh here” he said after suggesting that Bwoggers were “cowards” for skipping out on the event.

Up on Low Plaza, a speaker compared Columbia’s expansion plans to Columbus’s conquest of the New World. “You are just as guilty as Christopher Columbus” he exclaimed, although by then the seniors were more concerned with creaming each other than discussing the finer points of Fair Alma’s expansion policy. While Low crackled with moral guilt, College Walk had turned into a cream-charred battleground–soon a belligerent small child had joined the hysterical, close-quarter melee; one senior laughed as he slipped on a piece of tarp, and a pie-covered CCSC prez Michelle Diamond remembered during one break in the action that she had class at 2.

It wasn’t long before the the worlds of pie-thrower and decolonizer collided: said one speaker, “Take your pie, sit your asses down and listen to what we have to say.” The attempted killjoy had no perceivable effect on the pie-throwers, although at least one CCSCer looked conflicted. But for the most part, the combatants were absorbed with the essential task of digging chunks of whipped cream out of their hair.

-ARR

We got a tip or two about disturbances at the 110th subway stop, but Spec has the full story about the super-violent (three stabbings, a caning) teen brawl that went down earlier tonight here.

The second-hopefully-annual Pillow Fight is tonight. Meet at the Sundial at midnight, BYOP. Let’s make this into THIS.

Also, study break with copious desserts from Kitchenette in the EC 2nd floor lounge at 8:00 PM!

Aside from the lethal shooting of an NYU student, the burial of the kids and adults who didn’t make it out of that Bronx house fire, and about two days of above 65 degree weather, you didn’t miss much
in NYC. But at Columbia, on the other hand…just look at all of the exciting things that happened while you were gone:

The novelty of the Christmas decorations wore off halfway through the Yule Log bash, but the lights twinkled on for several snow-less months anyway. Yesterday, the holiday cheer was spotted bagged up and waiting for storage in Columbia’s musty attic until next year’s festivities.

Further down College Walk, a horde of baby journalists here for a Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference, wearing name tags and eager smiles, colonized Alma Mater. They’ve been crawling around campus all week. Go away!

And speaking of nuisances, Low Library is undergoing a “bird control project.” Luckily, the ugly scaffolding you may be able to see if you squint and look at the back of the photo at left, should be gone by tomorrow.

-SEV

Blades on campus

After raising the level of machete-related campus chatter to an all-time high last Friday, Spec cruelly crushed our Indiana Jones dreams with a correction today. “According to a statement issued Friday by Columbia’s office of public affairs—the first since the incident—the door was opened by a handyman under police supervision with a crowbar and power drill.”

That’s right, y’all. Crowbar, not machete. Our sympathy to the deceased.

Hosiery heist?

Overheard outside Duane Reade

Middle-aged woman to another middle-aged woman: “Excuse me, if I give you money, would you go in there and buy me a pair of knee-high stockings?”

Good Samaritanism

Bwog’s dear friend Yelena Shuster writes in with a plea for help:

“At three o’clock Sunday morning, I left many important materials in the Schapiro Sky Lounge, which included a purple binder packed with ALL of my class notes for ALL of my classes, midterm notes for CC, my finished homework for next week, and a black (personal) journal. I showed up at four in the afternoon, and there was nothing left.

An anonymous Bwog tipster reports this “fuck-you” fest and near fist-fight at everyone’s favorite cardboard-as-pizza joint…

Just letting you guys know that a friend and I had the opportunity to witness a small pre-Halloween brawl at Pinnacle tonight at approximately 2 am. It started when we noticed many expletives coming from the lower level of the eatery. Little did we know when we walked to look over the rail that quite a show was in store. A man (presumably a student) dressed in a tacky 70′s suit and awful chest hair (fake?) was yelling at the Pinnacle owner/manager over a slice of pizza. Apparently he wanted a new slice for free after dropping his slice on the floor, but the manager (who we had never seen so angry before) refused to comply to his wishes and began yelling back at the tacky-costumed customer.

Several of the characters visiting Pinnacle tried to interfere with Tacky 70′s Suit Guy, including his swashbuckling Zorro-sans-mask friend, the Green Giant, a blinged out balla’, a jump-suited convict, and an Asian kid.

However, most of the time Tacky 70′s Suit Guy continued yelling unpleasantries at whoever he could while continuing to argue over his pizza slice with the manager. Somewhere in midst of this the staff at Pinnacle locked and guarded the doors and called the police while several girls became emotional, the “fuck yous” continued getting thrown around at least 40 times, the manager became aggravated to the point of angrily leaving his customed counter and yelling at the various individuals involved, and straws and coffee stirrers were being tossed all over the place.

Around 10 minutes after the incident began the police arrived and people were dispersed. Tacky 70′s Suit Guy and friends were taken outside by police for questioning. It is unclear, however, if any arrests were made, since we figured it was best to get out at that point. The great part: the entire time while this was going on, customers were still slipping past the doors and the rumble to place food orders. I guess the show must go on.

Quote of the evening:

Tacky 70′s Suit Guy: “What, are they going to arrest me for,

dropping a fucking slice of pizza?”

Asian kid: “No, for being a fucking douchebag.”

(Everyone in the restuarant goes hysterical)

Happy Halloween!

In true Bwog style, we’ve read all of the 400+ comments (though it might be 500 by the time we post this) so you don’t have to.

Regarding the violence that erupted:

Posted by i can’t believe this: [#144] [reply]

I’m actually shocked by the ignorance and arrogance displayed by so many of the posts on this thread. For all the complaints I’ve heard about how Columbia is this bastion of liberalism, I find most people here to be overwhelmingly conservative! It was a protest, people. The whole point of a protest is to cause a disrupton. Protests shouldn’t just be grudgingly allowed in our society and our university, or penned in some “free speech area”, they should be actively encouraged. Why aren’t there more protests, more disruptions? I count protest a viable, valuable form of public debate…

And in reply:

Posted by mike: [#156] [reply]

I also protest violence against another human beings, immigrant or not, but I do not do so using violence.

One thing you have gained from this protest, at least, is one more columbia student disgusted with the so called “liberals” who cannot tolerate opinions other than their own.

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