Via the Inquirer, we hear that Joan Rivers is already lobbying to get her tween grandson into Penn.

“Melissa went to Penn, you know.”

We know, Joan. We know how proud you are. You tell us every time we meet. “Melissa works hard for Penn. She’s a big member of the Penn family, planning meetings, raising money. Make sure you put that in. We’ve got to get Cooper into Penn, and we’ve only got 10 years. . . . If my grandson doesn’t get in, I’m coming after you.”

Not only did Melissa go to Penn, but she famously founded The Tabard Society.  So her son will obviously join the one of the secret society’s manly counterparts, such as Oz, when he (inevitably) gets here.  We sure hope he’s smart!  If not, we’re looking at a serendipitously-timed Rivers family addition to the gym.  If he’s a dunce though, we could use a new yoga studio…

Today the University asserts its backbone, showing us that students can only urinate on a statue so many times before they have to face the consequences.  A tipster writes that Sir Ben “is being moved to outside Steiny-D as we speak from its original spot near the compass.”  We never thought we’d see the day.  Will this more visible location deter urination?  Developing…

About this time last year, we were WTF-ing at the news that Logan had been rechristened “Cohen Hall.” You’ll recall that it even made the Styles section! We’ve had a year for the news to sink in, and you know, whatever, Penn has dollar signs in its eyes, did we really expect the university to behave like anything other than the higher ed hustler we all know and love?

The truly weird thing about the whole Logan-Cohen switcheroo, in our eyes, was always the fact that billionaire-playboy-trustee Ron Perelman insisted on naming the building for his ex-wife, Claudia Cohen. Like, can we imagine Madonna naming a building after Guy Ritchie now that she’s divorced his ass? Nuh uh. With this in mind, we were checking out a little New York magazine write-up on Perelman from a few weeks ago, and we were once again baffled by his Claudia Cohen name droppage. Witness:

After years of being considered one of the city’s best restaurant customers, the billionaire investor (and occasional tabloid fixture) Ron Perelman has gone into the hospitality business, much to his apparent surprise … “My best friend in the world, other than Claudia Cohen”—his ex-wife, who died of cancer in 2007—“was my associate, Howard Gittis,” who also passed away that year. [emphasis ours]

Yeah, we totally stayed BFF with our second wives despite a messy divorce. We’re just good friends with our third wife, though, and we hardly ever see our fourth wife these days, except for the Tuesday night divorced couple bowling league we play in, of course. They’re all getting buildings when they die. It’s just like, common courtesy, ya know?

Photo by Mustafa Al-ammar

UTB fairygodmother Tali just gchatted us with a most disconcerting City Paper link:

Marathon Grill owner Cary Borish, manager Nick Maldonado and contractor Mike Parsell have converted U-City’s MarBar into Panda Bar, a new bar and music venue. Aesthetic changes include the addition of high-backed booths and vintage-style wallpaper. Food- and drink-wise, expect a largely American craft draft lineup and a bar menu with shareable eats like pierogies and Kobe sliders. The first performance for the 3,500-square-foot, 350 capacity space is scheduled for Sat., June 20; R5 Productions will soon start handling the booking.

We sure didn’t see that coming!  End of an era!  Whither the NSO hotspot?  Post your favorite MarBar memories in the comments.

Tipster Chris wrote in to tell us that Google’s Street View team has been spotted on Locust.  And what a mensch, he took pics too!

Read the rest of this entry »

We find it frankly mystifying that Greenwich preppies still exist in this day and age — we hoped that the recession’s silver lining was that it had done away with all that madras and seersucker. But alas, as the New York Times‘s Choice blog points out, preppies are resilient, and they need to know what color polo shirts to wear to their college interviews. Help is available, we learn, in the form of fashion shows for admissions interview looks at Greenwich’s Rugby by Ralph Lauren store.

We’re not sure what the point of this article is, other than like, ew, but it includes quotes from our very own Dean of Admissions and a rising sophomore named Margot Neuburger, a friend of the consultant who staged the show. Thankfully, Dean Furda does Penn proud, advising students that “What’s most important is that you’re yourself.” Provided that you have really high SAT scores, of course.

Listen up, Kerry Golds, this could be you in four short years: onetime Street editor and ’05 alum Grant Ginder can officially update his already-impressive resume to include his new novel, This Is How It Starts, which is out in bookstores this week.  Ginder was featured on Daily Intel yesterday, where he plugged his book and sadly made no mention of Penn.  Good thing we never forget a Streetie!  (We don’t, um, actually call ourselves that though.)  The book, per Amazon, is “about how far one postcollegiate idealist will go to be an insider in a town that is unyielding in what it will take from a person in exchange for granting him a margin of knowledge and power.”  Sounds juicy — we would expect nothing less from one of our own.

Since we just extorted you to send us tips, we should probably share some of the ones we’ve been meaning to share for the past few weeks. It’s round-up time, bitches.

• Restaurateur Stephen Starr has set his sights on DC.  What are we gonna do tonight, Stephen? Same thing we do every night, try to take over the world by opening yet another luxury asian-fusion pretentierie, this time in our nation’s capitol.
• The Ivy League sucks at sports? Whatever.
• Bikes beat cars, and also make you look more badass, which is why we’ve taken to walking around with one of our pant legs jauntily rolled up. J/K you can’t really roll up gaucho shorts. (But they’re badass in their own way.)
• Supreme Court lady-in-waiting Sonia Sontomayor’s brother Juan Sotomayor did a fellowship at CHOP. According to the right wing site we saw this on, that’s grounds for smearing him.  That pinko ivory tower educated bastard.
• Some delirious old man wrote in to Princeton’s alumni mag to complain about the preponderence of women overruning his fair alma mater.
• Penn’s women’s ultimate frisbee team tied for fifth place in the nation. Rock on, ladies.
• And just for the lulz: a tipster wrote in to tell us that www.pod.com belongs not to the 36th Street sushi mecca, but is “a blank webpage except for a large picture of a badger/skunk/beaver.” We kind of love that.

Loyal readers, you’ve probably noticed that UTB updates have been sporadic since finals, but we’d like to reassure that we’re still here, ready and willing to help you procrastinate. On that note, we’ve got a few housekeeping-type announcements:

"Tell Jesus the Button is back."

We need your tips! With the UTB staff and Penn in general scattered across the world, we’re still getting used to keeping tabs on a less-concentrated-but-no-less-ridiculous student body. You can help us with that by sending us your tips, and sending ‘em early and often.  And while you’re at it, add us to your gchat list and freaking IM us already, we’re hella bored. Now remember, geniuses, it’s underthebutton AT gmail.com.

We need new writers! We’re always looking for new blood here at UTB, and some of you may have a lot more free time now that it’s summer and you’re unemployed/your a capella group practices ended/your girlfriend dumped you. Or maybe your life isn’t pathetic and you want to write for us anyway, that would be fine too! We’re especially interested in some dispatches from incoming ’13s. Hit us up.

We want to know what you’re up to. In the vein of our short-lived and generally unsuccessful series on “Abrogs,” we want to start up a little feature on people that are doing cool things with their summers. Are you interning for Obama? Have you improbably scored a gig as Bernie Madoff’s manservant? Or perhaps you are friends with Obama interns and Madoff manservants. Either way, we need to know about it.

We have new summer editors. Devoted readers of this blog will recognize the bylines of Hillary Reinsberg and Charlotte Borgen, both of whom have been upgraded to Summer Editors. They will be around, joining the gang you know and love: associate eds Lauren Lipsay and Jessica Goldstein, all-knowing editrix Julia Rubin, our regular slate of contributors, and your lowly UTB Editor (that’s “emeritus” now, trust), whoever-the-hecksky that is.

And there you have it, Earthquakes. E-mail us immediately.

From zero to sixty in two-ish weeks, Capogiro sure got its act together quick.  The store opened today!  Just in time for…well, nothing, because everyone just went home for the summer.  Still, though.  Gelato!

Amy Gutmann conferred seniors’ Penn diplomas yesterday morning, but Smoke’s patrons had the chance to earn an even more exclusive diploma at the 40th Street institution.  Check out one of the certificates below, which the owner was handing out last night (this one belongs to a UTB housemate):

One grad’s funny mortarboard message — the graduation version of fling bling — made the front page of today’s New York Times and page two of the Wall Street Journal.  According to our sources (read: according to our merciless stalkage of a friend’s gchat status), the identity of said mystery jokester is (former) senior Nate Weiner.

Here’s hoping that a human resources exec somewhere out there responds to this bold gesture.

UTB hears that Dev Patel (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) bucked celeb tradition last night, skipping Pod and heading instead to Distrito.  Apparently he’s in town filming M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, The Last Airbender.  Did he enjoy Distrito’s constant loop of scenes from that ridiculous movie where Jack Black plays a Mexican monk/wrestler?  ‘Cause trust us, it gets funnier after a few sangrias.

Less than twenty-fours left, ’09ers. A parting gift from our esteemed Food & Drink editor, Eliza: