That’s right, kids. There’s a new website called ThePartyFund.com, and they will give you 100 free dollars to throw the low-budget party of your dreams. Sort of. There are some strings, of course.

1) Lest you think, “decorations be damned,” the money can not go toward 7 bottles of Barton’s (are they still $14? I haven’t been back in so long). A rep for the site tells me, “The funds that the Students receive are for supplies for the party, excluding alcohol.”

2) They might not even have cool brands, and the brands are supposed to help you set up the party. “We are still lining up sponsors for the first couple weeks of parties, reaching out to companies targeting the college market.” (Translation: we don’t have enough press coverage to interest any brands yet, and BP didn’t seem like a good partner for us.)

3) How they make money: “We partner with brands and charge a service fee from the brand to set up the party and track the results.” Better get those brands on board then, buddy.

Original launch date was October 4th. New launch date is the 17th. They’re only picking 10 schools so if you want to give Cornell an even douchier name, sign up now. Full press release below.

‘”You Party, We Fund.”  That’s the slogan of the hottest new start-up on college campuses: The Party Fund.

The Party Fund, as the name suggests, is a fund which issues weekly grants to lucky students to host parties on campus.

Grants of $100 each go live each Wednesday at 11PM EST on thepartyfund.com and are given out on a first come, first served basis, and are to be used to host a party on campus.

The grants are funded by sponsors who require grant recipients to do a small task – like invite their friends to their website – and upload appropriate pictures from the party and tag the sponsor on Facebook.

“It’s a way for brands to build a connection with students in both the digital and real world that is lasting and meaningful,” says Andrew Watson, Director of Partnerships at The Party Fund.

Pre-registration is now open and The Party Fund will only be available initially at ten schools before expanding. The schools will be determined as the close of pre-registration on October 4^th with the ten schools with the highest pre-registrants becoming eligible.

The first grants go live October 12^th.

Pre-register at www.thepartyfund.com

Well, it’s another embarrassing day for Cornell.  Christopher Langone, a PhD student at our illustrious institution, recently filed a class-action law suit against rock band Rush for inconsiderately letting their Chicago concert get rained out—and he wants $$$ for those beers he bought, too, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

The band, which Wikipedia terms “Canadian progressive rock,” were supposed to perform in Chicago last Wednesday, July 7, but cancelled due to rain—apparently in spite of ticket stubs which read “rain or shine.”  Langone, who told the Sun-Times that he had flown to Chicago to see the show with old friends, did not take the disappointment gracefully.

Despite calling himself “a lifelong fan of Rush,” Langone has filed a class-action lawsuit demanding reimbursement for the six tickets he purchased (he says he can’t make the rescheduled concert) as well as airfare and other expenses.  And those other expenses include not only his travel expenses but, apparently, the round of beers he ordered at Charter One Pavilion before the concert was cancelled.

Really, Chris?  You want to be paid back for the beers?  I can understand some reasonable frustration at having traveled all the way to Chicago to see a cancelled show, but if you were really meeting up with old-time friends, they must have been pretty disappointing.

And as a “lifelong fan,” I’m shocked you couldn’t give the aging rockers a break.  They make have been some righteous dudes back in the seventies, but they’ve spent the last thirty years in Canada.  And I hate to break it to you, but I doubt a lawsuit’s going to get you the kind of autograph you want.

Langone, 42, is studying for his PhD in the Department of Communication.  I could imagine better PR than suing one’s supposed musical idol over a rained-out concert.

Where Andy Bernard reminisces aloud of his Here Comes Treble a cappella superstardom at Cornell, Natalie is the type who’s more likely to remember nights spent tirelessly studying for her upper-level Johnson School classes, which she took on top of her AEM courses just to show her classmates that the Ag School Biz program is not a joke.

For those that didn’t see the movie, here’s a little recap of the relevant points: George Clooney plays the main role of Ryan Bingam, a “career transition counselor” who goes to companies and fires people for the bosses who would rather not do it themeselves. Natalie is an upstart new hire at Clooney’s company, and she suggests a new way of firing people: via videoconference.

This would save the company a ton of cheddar on travel expenses, but presents the movie’s plot-propelling conflict: Clooney only feels at home when he’s up in the air on a plane and doesn’t want to part with the comforts and of his aviation routine. So it’s only natural that Natalie should have to accompany him around the nation and learn the virtues of firing people in the flesh before her new video-firing protocols can be established.

Natalie is, until the middle of the movie, a terribly unlikable character. She carries all of the know-it-all-ness and need-to-be-right-ness of Question Girl in CHEM 207, but she never needs to ask questions (especially not in front of the whole class) because she already knows she’s right. She has the drive (and audacity) to institute change at her workplace right when she starts. She knows that she belongs in upper management and everything else is a mere beeline to that end. Until her martini-fueled breakdown, she’s a complete robot. But then we learn that Natalie followed a boy to Omaha, where the company’s physical offices are. And then the boy leaves her — via text message! just like poor Kelly — and she’s suddenly a human, emotional creature.

Is it good to have a character like Natalie projected, in some form, into the psychic understanding of Cornell? She’s actually a perfect complement to Andy Bernard: female, capable, and business-savvy, she proves that Cornell grads do go real places in the workplace and not all go onto become regional sales managers. Sadly, Natalie’s going to be much, much less known that Andy Bernard because nobody sees Oscar films.

Still, she’s not the best we could ask for; the America’s pop culture mind needs a better Cornell figure to absorb than the real life ones we have right now. (I’m talking to you, Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann.) Harvard has that symbolologist Richard Langdon who solves big murder mysteries in the nick of time. And Yale has plenty of real life people who are famous and do good stuff. Like Secret Society-affiliated presidents and stuff. When’s Cornell’s big break?

Andy mentions his Cornell (ever heard of it?) days:

Andy on his drinking habits at Cornell:

Anna Kendrick talks about Up in the Air:

Tomorrow (Thursday, April 23) an article will run in the Cornell Daily Sun.  It will showcase the following information.

At the beginning of this academic year I (Chris Donohoe) was asked to step down from my leadership position with a religious organization (Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship) on campus after coming out of the closet.  Although the university is taking aggressive action to address this injustice, it is time for the LGBT community and its allies to unite.

This is more than a slap in the face to one individual, this is a slap in the face to the entire LGBT community–especially those of faith.  Chi Alpha is basically saying that my sexuality–along with the sexualities of every other LGBT community member–is not legitimate in the eyes of God.

Consequently, we have planned a candlelight demonstration the evening of Friday, April 24.  All members of the Cornell and Ithaca community are encouraged to attend this peaceful demonstration.  We will gather in front of McGraw Hall on the Arts Quad from 7:15 until 7:45pm as members of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship gather inside the building for their Friday night meeting. The event will last only 30 minutes.

Who: The LGBT community and its allies
What: A candlelight demonstration
When: Friday, April 24, 7:15pm-7:45pm
Where: On the Arts Quad in front of McGraw Hall
Why: To show that the Cornell and Ithaca Community is unified in its efforts to promote equal rights for all people.

BRING YOURSELF AND 5 FRIENDS!

Another thing I’m working on is called Sneuth, which stands for snoop and sleuth (and maybe snark) all put into one clunky yet surprisingly cool-sounding neologism. Our first project is Alternatournell, an alternate look at Cornell in video form as above. Check it out, and tell prospective freshman about it PLEASE. The first installment will be out Monday. Even if you don’t like the video content (it’s jerky at times :/ ), Get Low is involved. TO THE WINDOWWW. TO THE WALLLL.

ADDENDUM: So, according to an anonymous source who asked not to be named, it looks as if the Dolls’ agents merely “confirmed [their] precognition” that they’d be headlining Slope Day. Precognition being that a student (who’s probably an E-Board member on the Slope Day Programming Board or at least having sex with one) tipped off a wily editor, who then called the William Morris Agency to “pretend to book an event on the same day as slope day. to which the contact replied ‘They’re booked in ithaca’ or something of the like.” That’s a helluv clever way to confirm a rumor. Kudos to y’all, Daily Punners. Sorry I was rude. The anonymous source added: “Power of the press baby.”

Okay, oops. Ann Coulter was born in New York City and then her family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. My point remains, though, that Coulter has helped me out in developing an intense and irrational hatred of a state that has never really wronged me in any substantial way.

Listed in order of increasing competence, outlets NY Mag, IvyGate, and MetaEzra have commented on Coulter’s claim that the Ag School is a “Plastic Ivy,” a claim launched in order to devalue fellow alum Keith Olbermann’s “plastic” degree. Since it’s all been said before, we’ll just say that squabbling over whether or not a school can be considered part of a group that is, essentially, an ATHLETIC CONFERENCE is elitist, polarizing, and therefore typical of political discourse nowadays.

Back to the top 10 reasons I hate Connecticut:

1) It created Ann Coulter.

2) It has the highest per capita GDP of any state.

3) Its motto is “Full of Surprises.”

4) Yale is there and has a way better gay scene than Cornell, even though it’s WAY smaller. Whatever. I’m not bitter. New Haven’s a crime-y, rape-y, shithole anyway.

5) It’s full of boring WASPs who stole New York City’s money from immigrants like my great-great-grandma Ida Bowes. At least we immigrant ethnics are brash, loud, annoying, and serve calorically loaded items other than booze at parties.

6) It’s called the Nutmeg State and NOBODY KNOWS WHY. Also, nutmeg is an altogether pedestrian spice.

7) I thought that the etymology of its name came from the “connecting (short) cut” between New York City and Boston. The Connect-I-Cut! But instead it’s just some Native American word for “place of long tidal river.” Pfffff.

8) We always got stuck in traffic there for HOURS when we were going to visit our cousins on Cape Cod, meaning it makes me think of being trapped listening to Sheryl Crow CD’s on repeat, while the stench of Aunt Susan’s farts grew ever more putrid.

9) An old guy got hit by a car in soulless insurance capital Hartford (one of my Top 10 American Cities, deffo) and nobody helped a brotha out.

10) Do I really need a tenth reason to hate a vast affluent wasteland? Okay, fine, for all y’all Clueless fans: They’re virgins who can’t drive.

If you are a gay man who doesn’t know who Larry Paciotti is, that’s forgivable. But if you gay men don’t know Chi Chi LaRue, you might be fooling yourself — she (the drag/gay porn director persona of Larry) has directed hundreds (thousands? is too lazy to do research) of titles you may have used your dominant hand to “enjoy.” Watch on, trannies.

This lil FB-msg interview was conducted before tix sold out, which was announced via Facebook message by Ms. Arkin at around 10:40am today (Wed Feb 25):

Hey Evan-
I’ll try to answer these to the best I can. I’m just making clear that number 4 is my own personal opinion and should not reflect the opinions of Cornell Concert Commission or Cornell University and all entities that may be involved (always need a disclaimer).

1) how many tickets total have sold? what’s the breakdown between CU and gen pub?
>> as of 8:04pm on Tuesday, we’ve sold a little over 4700 tickets, out of 5200. Out of that, around 1/4th is general public, give or take a few extra student tickets. This tends to be the usual breakdown.

2) how did your e-board get in touch with ludacris?
>>The Ludacris concert is sponsored by the Minority Concert Fund Advisory Board (MCFAB), which is a collaboration of CCC and ALANA. Our advisor for MCFAB/CCC, Joe Scaffido, negotiates offers and contracts with agents and artists directly.

3) how did shawnna get added on?
MCFAB developed a list of possible openers, and she was on the list. An offer was submitted, and she accepted the offer.

4) do you think the hyper-sexual messages of luda and shawnna are fitting to the cornell community in general?
>>I personally believe that both artists fulfill a niche of very popular music these days. Personally, I feel that a lot of rap has “hyper-sexual messages” and does not reflect necessarily the attitudes of Cornell students, but it does reflect what popular rap content is these days.

5) will there be any surprises?
>> If there are any surprises, we are not aware of them. Maybe this is the surprise of all surprises, but I’m anticipating no.

If I understand space/time/math correctly, this means 500 tickets were sold between Tuesday night and this (Wednesday) morning… which is pretty impressive, no? I don’t know if any show has actually ever sold out Barton Hall — so kudos to the organizations who pulled Luda and ‘Nna.

But take those kudos with a grain of salt, CCC/ALANA/MCFAB,  because I want to make absolutely clear that I am NOT OKAY with your prostitution of our student body. Happy Endtimes!

–EVAN THE PROPHET