Gawker
Bard College, the liberal arts school located 120 miles north in Annandale-on-Hudson, "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts,'" according to the 'Princeton Review.' It has a 600-acre campus and nearly 1500 undergrads. This is their story—as told by a student who would like to be known as Stephan K. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.
The Friday after Thanksgiving, the day that America shops. Students that hail from small liberal arts colleges like Bard have little need for purchasing marked-down trinkets and gym memberships. Instead, the majority of Bard students gather in New York, and observe one another in their natural habitats.
At a party hosted by a friend (we'll call her Saint Dee) at her penthouse apartment, there was Adrian. She leaned against a large silver sculpture and, manifesting a somewhat accidental Southern accent, asked me if "this was what private school parties were like."
I said that I thought so. Adrian and I went to the same public high school, recently compared (in light of the various scandals associated with the report cards given out by the city to public high schools) by none-other-than Bard president Leon Botstein himself, to a vegetarian restaurant that doesn't serve the meat the Department of Education is looking for. Keep yours eyes on the New York Times for new and improved metaphors from He-Who-Shall-Be-Named-Repeatedly-As-Often-As-Possible.
Anyway, the apartment, by no means anything less than gorgeous, was packed with kids from, as Saint Dee put it, "around the world." They were all equipped with brand new wine glasses, the labels of which Saint Dee's mother was graciously removing from the glasses as she wandered about.
The mother, who said of herself that she was "supposed to be locked in my room, not talking to anyone," also told us that she had "dreamed of going to Bard" and so she was "overjoyed" that her daughter was able to attend such a wonderful college where we would be "meeting the most amazing people you'll meet in your entire lives."
She then inspected a nearby kid's joint-rolling skills, gave him a few pointers, and said goodnight.
Paul, decidedly lost on the East Coast, exclaimed that he wanted "a mother just like that" which prompted many people around us to agree vehemently.
Praising Bard College was a theme for the night, I realized, while outside talking to a sophomore I had never seen before (a rare occurrence in such a small community, probably caused by the fact that she was barely tall enough to reach the counter). She told me that Bard was "paradise" and "the only good place left on earth, or at least in America."
"New York," she said, "is a wasteland. New York is dead. It's over, New York is over, and all that's left is Bard."
"Can I write about you in my column?" I asked, thirsting for material. "I write a column for Gawk—"
She held up her hand to my face. Her wineglass shivered a little in her other hand. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Then she opened them again, stepped back and shoved my shoulder.
"NARC!" she screamed. "It's you! You're the NARC! I've been looking for you!"
I laughed.
"You're the one who's been reporting on us! Why—Why would you do that?"
"Wait," I interrupted her. "You're kidding, right? You read Gawker?"
"Of course I read Gawker, I'm from the city, what the fuck else would I read?" she responded and then whipped out her phone.
She insisted on taking my number, telling me that she wanted to "remember me" and that we would "discuss this later." The event prompted some discussion between me and my friend, CC Mellows, who had seen the whole thing.
"What would my pseudonym be?" she asked.
"I don't know, what do you want it to be?"
"CC Mellows! Oh, but don't be mean if you write about me!" she said.
"No, no, never, of course not... What would I say, that you don't smoke pot, that you're British, that you smoke Capri's...."
"Well, that's fine," she said. "But you know those people on Gawker, not matter what you say, they'll be like 'CC MELLOWS IS A CUNT!'"
Another girl I spoke to about being depicted in the column, an Australian (Saint Dee clearly wasn't kidding when she said "kids from all around the world") told me I could put her in the column, but added: "Don't be too harsh."
"I wouldn't dream of it!" I tried to reassure her.
"Oh, but don't worry," she said. "You can be a little mean, just not too much, I mean, I used to write for 'Vice Australia,' so I know how to spell cynicism!"
And so it seems that Bard students are little bit more on edge when they arrive back in the city. The next night a group of us partied at the apartment of a friend. The girl lived in New Jersey, but the apartment, in Battery Park City, was a place her parents owned for weekend trips into the city.
It didn't take long for one of us to discover a cabinet with buckets of porn, the majority of which featured a character named "Big Omar."
After someone let the gerbil they had found in a parking lot with half a tail out of its portable cage, and we wandered over to Bowling Green to find a cell phone-less friend, we began to discuss the return trips plans for Sunday.
"If you guys come to Jersey with me in the afternoon, I'll drive you home," GG Trance offered to me and Lips.
"What are we going to do in Jersey?"
"Go to an All-You-Can-Eat Mongolian Grill and then drive really fast over speed bumps near the L'Oreal factory."
There was silence. Adrian twirled her hair with one hand and fixed her tights with the other. She looked around, giggled a little, and then smiled.
"I miss Bard," she said.
Previously: The Day David Bowie Died
Comments
His friend's name is СС Mellows? Jesus fucking Christ.
CC Mellows is a cunt.
@elijahpollack: Oh, and she's a fucking cunt, or so I've heard.
@quitit: LOLz! OMG!
"Go to an All-You-Can-Eat Mongolian Grill and then drive really fast over speed bumps near the L'Oreal factory."
I know exactly where that is.
"We were at this party and I was writing this column and it was not not a beautiful penthouse apartment, tilting precariously over the dead, dead, dead city streets. And there I was drinking with them, peeling labels off glasses, ogling moms, and the wind from somewhere was whistling through my ears, I was bumming cigarettes to Mellow Yellow and I was thinking about how much I love it here and how much I love being a "narc" and I don't really get why I'm doing any of this, yeah ANY of this, the school, the narc, the low thrum of Mr. Lif's bass pulsing through me, and I started to think maybe that's why I'm so tired all the time, you know, being like this, fucking, you know, contradiction or whatever. I miss Bard but I also don't. I miss making fun of Bard. Yeah. Maybe that's it. Or maybe my head just hurts and I'm thinking weird. Too many (speed) bumps."
CC Mellows, you rule. I love you.
Reading this makes me wish that I'd had any friends at all back when I was at Bard.
Am I supposed to know who CC Mellows is? It sounds like one of the names my friend and I have cooked up for our future as crazy cat collecting old ladies. CC Mellows (or Meows), Proffesor Mew-Mew, and Corporal Cutiekins.
I dunno about this installment of "Whit Stillman's Less Than Zero Gossip Girls in the Rye." On the other hand, I'm not Charlotte Simmons.
"meeting the most amazing people you'll meet in your entire lives."
Really? Have you ever been to Oberlin?
I miss Bard too...
I graduated 11 years ago. We didn't drink wine then, just kegs of Genessee Cream Ale, or if there was wine, it was Conche Del Torro and it was out of a jug in the woods.
Hey: don't knock the air time you can get from Jersey speed bumps until you've tried--
OOPS!!!!!
--hey, keep driving! I think that was a kid!
@elijahpollack: Or Rikers?
@LolCait: OMAR would like a word with you.
sounds like this kid is using the column to get laid. game over, man, game over.
@adminslave: CC Mellows is my porn name.
Why does the parking lot only have half a tail? Also, which half does it have?
@suboptimal: It was a gerbil. Perhaps it wandered out of the porn cabinet?
@guevara284: Stephan K don't edit so good.
@Colonel Mustard:
So you had a pet named CC and lived on Mellows Street?
@guevara284:
Ha. Where've you been?
@Colonel Mustard: Mine is BB Chills. Growing up on Chills Blvd was awesome. And BB was the best chinchilla a little girl could ask for.
Damnit, one year of West Virginia Wesleyan College left... Where should I go to grad school to get a PsyD?
@Koala325: Actually, my pet was named Mellows and I grew up on CC Boulevard, but "Mellows CC" just sounded WAY too...I dunno, cunty.
asked me if "this was what private school parties were like"
Wow. The parties I went to were usually in rambling decaying and drafty houses (with names like "Fridigdaire", "Ponderosa", and "The Convent" where the women's rugby team lived) that usually had 8 or 9 people sharing rooms to save on rent. The shag carpeting was usually damp from the beer that spilled from your plastic cup when the dogs, running through the house, almost knocked you over. Usually some dude took too much acid, resulting in him getting naked and running outside in the cold rain or pogoing wildly to the band that had also taken too much acid and was reduced to playing noise rock. The whole place smelled like patchouli oil, so you'd end up on one of the many dirty couches that were outside on the porch, trying desperately to pick up that chick who would have nothing to do with you.
Less Than Zero.
@cmd: Why else would you write a column?
@LolCait: Mr. Lif!
@BinkysDream: I think we must know each other.
@Koala325: I was taking a mental health sabbatical - I accidentally walked in on J.A. adjusting her tampon and things just haven't been the same since.
@Colonel Mustard: Mine would be...Buffy Trumbull. Not so hot.
There are three Bard hotties who ride in my taxi on a regular basis for the 6 mile trek from the Rhinecliff Amtrak station to the Jonestown-style encampment surrounding Leon Botstein's ego in Annandale: India, Julia and Sabrina. The rest are quite straight-laced and are obssessed by video games like any other Midwestern youth and really are quite boring when it comes to college students. They've got nothing on the folks from Hiram, Wittenburg, Kenyon, et al, out where "A Million Little Pieces" never really took place.
@guevara284:
Mine's "Boo-Boo Canterbury."
Beat that.
(Thanks mom and dad, for naming the twin kittens Moo-Moo and Boo-Boo).
My uncle's is Gaylord Pearl, though. I always thought that was a pretty good one.
@misssgolightly: Boo Boo Tannenbaum?
Mine would be [redacted.]
So many wonderful things about Bard--amazing faculty, beautiful campus, great programs--are marred by the presence of idiotic douches like Stephan K here.
This kind of self-satisfied monologue reminds me of a trustafarian my friends and I used to call "Penis Dreads," who had a penchant for wearing overalls with no shirt. I had the misfortune of being in a class with Penis Dreads junior year. He used to lean back in his chair and prop his calloused bare feet on the seminar table as he launched into smug rambling about his sex life, the high school he went to, or whatever other stupid fucking uninteresting thing was on his mind that day. I used to sit there and pray for God to send me an axe to chop off his hairy hobbit toes and stuff them in his mouth.
Toe-castrating rage notwithstanding, this post makes me slightly nostalgic for the days when I got to hang out in the fancy lofts of the $1000 pants crowd. Those rich kids are crazy!
I don't know why all the fuss about Bard. It's a shitty school. The students are Vassar and Oberlin rejects. Maybe even Sarah Lawrence rejects. From my experience, Bard students truly suck at life and nobody cares about them. Fuck them. At any rate, they're not even the ones really polluting our city-- New York has had its share of boring pseudo-literati since the dawn of time.
Gawker should have a "Night Out With" column like the one in the NYT, except instead of B-and-C-list celebrities, there should be a "Night Out With a frat boy from Wisconsin" or "a night out with a Republican". Oh wait, I guess being friends with frat boys and Republicans is pretty hipster. Sigh.
I second the motion: Why are you guys dissing Bard? As they say at the track: "who d'you like?"
It's easier to make fun of the other, much more heinous, moving targets in the world of academia, and so I suppose you are trying to be contrarian. But, if I read you people on here correctly, I expect most of you would have been happier at a school like that than at many others.
That is -- I guess -- if Bard would have ever admitted you?
Well look: I never wanted to go there either (and Didn't).
How about (chew on these) -- the real Douche schools:
1. PRINCETON
2. Dartmouth
3. Williams
4. Mt. Holyoke
5. Wheaton
6. U VA
7. Washington & Lee
8. USC
9. You pick no. 9 -- but it can't be Bard or Wesleyan
10. Uh -- almost forgot -- PRINCETON. YES!!!
What about it, Gawker-peeps? You Know I Have Your Number tonight.
Amore,
Geeze I am glad I did my undergrad at UNC-CH. The parties were much better....
manifesting a somewhat accidental Southern accent
CC Mellows is the only one who's not a cunt here.
OK, you got me to look and therefore got your one extra lousy page view, BUT, after reading this I am decided that this is decidedly unfunny and boring, no matter how many onion skins of irony get peeled away. If I call Emperor's New Clothes on this whole column, do I get chased by gawker pitchforks and torches?
Igby does CC...at Bard...because NYC is a wasteland, and...all that's left are girls from Bard who are"from the city" and read Gawker, because what the f*** else would they read?
I'm very concerned these children were being duped into using grape-inappropriate stemware.
@far-far:
No it's cool, it's not a column about Bard anymore, it's a column about writing a column about Bard, and how it entitles you to all the Capri-smoking cunty midget lovin' you can stomach. The meta makes it interesting! Right? Right? Hello?
@TimeWarnerRhymeAnaheim: There are lots of pretty, easy girls at Mt. Holyoke, so I think that's a plus.
But also? If you're a guy? Don't be wandering around Mt Holyoke's campus after eight PM looking for your friend's dormitory. Campus security will drop a black bag over your head and drag you off to an interrogation room for THREE HOURS, trying to get you to admit to being a psychotic serial rapist/murderer.
In other news, why is this guy even writing a column? About being bored with how boring everyone he knows is? There's no couches getting set on fire, no one accidentally threw his dog out a window, no riots in which the student council tries to seize control of campus housing from the Housing Committee.
You guys know that actually interesting things happen at other schools, right?
Wow.
Nothing has changed at Bard since I graduated from there in 92.
@BinkysDream: yes, Binky, but Portland is too far away to be Gawkerized.
I wrote for cat fancy and therefore don't know how to spell cynicism.
Team CC Mellows!