You know what would really help solve this budget crisis: just getting rid of the professors. Don’t get something? Just press the “I don’t understand” button on your chair. [New York Times]

There’s a lot of Shakespeare going on in Berkeley, folks. Check out the BareStage production of “Othello” or The Globe Theatre’s production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at Zellerbach. The Clog has seen both and we can vouch that both are excellent. [Cal Performances]

If, for some reason, you have the mid-fall urge to go ice skating, then too bad. Just kidding—you can head over to the Embarcadero rink or the Safeway Rink in Union Square in SF to get your skate on. [7x7]

Earlier: Twitter Bitterness Never Gets Old

As you may or may not have heard, someone has apologized to you recently. No, it isn’t that girl who hit you with her backpack in the slap-dash rush out of Wheeler on Friday afternoon. It isn’t even the guy who laughed uproariously at inappropriate moments while you were trying to watch a movie.  No, it was Sandy Barbour, Berkeley’s Director of Athletics.

Before you get excited, she isn’t apologizing for a soul-crushing Homecoming.  She’s actually apologizing for a more literal crushing—that of your body against a complete stranger’s at Memorial Stadium.  The letter of apology, addressed rather ambiguously to “Cal Football Fans,” laments the lack of crowd control at this past Saturday’s game.

In particular, Ms. Barbour states:

“An immediate review after the game found that almost half the crowd entered the stadium through just two gates – Gates 1 and 2 – near the north side of the stadium. The resulting bottleneck caused lines to back up, especially on the concourse level.”

In other words, there was an honest-to-God clusterf*ck.

But they’ll do better next time. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves as we clutch our Cal foam finger forlornly and rock back and forth, wailing softly. Everything will be better next time.

Image source: ian_ransley under Creative Commons
Cal Athletics to Examine Crowd Control [Cal Bears]

Every year, Homecoming leaves us with a taste of … disappointment … in our mouths, whether it be from football flops, midterm season or something else. But you can at least always count on a variety of campus events every Homecoming week to sweeten that taste (which is kind of like sour apples) just a little bit. So with that in mind, read below the jump for a somewhat-officialistical schedule of Homecoming to-do’s.

Tuesday

*Acts on Sproul from noon to 1 p.m. on Upper Sproul Plaza. Sounds pretty generic: “Come and watch your fellow student groups as they put on a showcase of their culture and talents.”
*UCRC Fashion Show at 7 p.m. in the Heller Lounge. Hmm, we’ve seen Cal fashion shows before and … well,  let’s just say they weren’t nearly as interesting as other shows.

Wednesday

*Acts on Sproul again. Same time, same place, same Bat channel.
*UCRC Colloquium at 8 p.m. in the Alumni House. We hope this is different from the 6 to 8 p.m. event scheduled at the Alumni House, at least on the Homecoming site. Because that one is invite-only, and we don’t like invite-only events … when we don’t get invited. Oh, poo.

Thursday

*Acts on Sproul. Again.
*Dance and Casino Night! 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Alumni House. We’ve never been, but it sounds intriguing to say the least. Dress is semi-formal, Cal ID is required, admission is free, plus there’ll be a drawing for amazing prizes like katanas Kaplan courses. Oh wait, it was way cooler when we thought samurai swords were involved.

Friday

*UCRC Homecoming BBQ at 6 p.m. in Spieker Plaza.
*UCRC Homecoming Rally at Haas Pavilion, right after the BBQ at 8 p.m.
*Star Trek. Get excited.

Saturday

*1868 Cal Avenue Fair from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Memorial Glade. The official description: “a variety of student groups showcase the diversity of the Berkeley campus by providing guests with food, games, and entertainment before the homecoming football game.” Pray tell how does that showcase diversity, exactly?
*Free ice cream from Fenton’s, same time same place as the above. Mmmm.
*Football.

Image Source: minwoo under Creative Commons
Student Homecoming [Site]
Earlier: Homecoming: The Book: The Movie: The Blog Post

Sunday Shout-Out picks out the week’s stories that simply slipped our minds.

Ever feel like there just isn’t enough coffee in this town? Well, we guess it’s a good thing Philz Coffee is coming to help you all get your fillz of the caffeinated stuff. (Nyuck.) [InBerkeley]

Oh Berkeley News Center, you sure do know how to write a headline. Now that we think about it, “Boisterous Rally” probably would’ve been a more accurate and less negative way to describe the walkout. [NewsCenter]

This happened. Turns out 42 is actually a lot more than three. Who knew? [Daily Cal]

Freshmen in triples, thank your lucky stars you don’t go to Tufts. [Paper Trail]

Image Source: Anna Vignet, Daily Cal [ASIB]
Earlier: One-a-Penny, Two-a-Penny

We feel kind of bad for finding this amusing. Except not really. Uh, go Bears?

Cal Band is Brutal [YouTube], via California Golden Blogs

The UCPD officers most involved with the 21-month charade were recognized for their perilous acts in the line of duty — and by recognized, we do mean hailed, cheered, and adored by some 6,000 sweaty bodies of testosterone and pigskin hype. The police officers took the field during a pause in Cal’s domination (more or less) over Arizona State, and the roar that filled the stadium was, admittedly, a bit sickening.

Don’t get us wrong, we were counting down the tree-sitters’ last days, too, but here’s a thought: Hippies are people, too. Smelly and odd as they may be. Behaving like animals and rubbing their noses in our victory may have been a bit much on our side.

But then again, this is college football, and we are the Bears. Grrrr …

Stay tuned for plans to raise sub-squillion dollars in future Cal Athletics fund raising.

Image Source: dboy under Creative Commons, edited by April Isabel Angeles
Earlier: Let the Joyous News Be Spread: Tree-Sitters Come Down

Yep, it’s that special time of year that’s like every other special time of year—Homecoming is back! (Though we could have gone with midterm season.) Berkeley has a Homecoming you can take pride in: Unlike other campus festivities like Caltopia, you can get lots of free things during Homecoming.

And unlike Cal Day, there will be tons of lectures by Berkeley professors that will make even the most balanced jack of all trades feel inadequate. And unlike the Big Game, there will be a rally with mass, cultish chanting in an effort to magically secure a win for the upcoming football game.

To get you all in the spirit, the Clog decided to pick out a few events for which you should keep your eyes out:

Wednesday
Check out the Acacia House Fraternity Band from noon to 1 p.m. on Upper Sproul Plaza as they play only cover songs—no originals. The song lineup will include such goodies as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.”

Also check out Picnic Day on Memorial Glade from 11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food lineup will include such goodies as downtown Oakland and Berkeley restaurant samples. Just remember—if you’re going to play Frisbee, don’t do it on the west side of the glade. It’s treacherous.

Thursday
Dance and Casino Night promises to be entertaining at the very least. Come dressed in your fanciest shmanciest suit or dress to dance or play Blackjack. Just don’t bleed out the corner of your eye or else the chiseled British man with the incomparable wit will take $100 million from your secret bank account.

Friday
Get some free Fenton’s ice cream at the Homecoming Headquarters Student Tent from noon to 1 p.m. We admit, originally we weren’t going to post this—until we remembered we have a midterm during that exact block of time. Oh well, we had some Fenton’s on Sunday anyway.

Later in the day will be the Rally Committee’s traditional pre-rally barbecue and rally. The barbecue, as it turns out, is free and so is the rally. But rallies hardly fill up an empty stomach … unless they’re some sort of, we don’t know, food rally. Do they even have those?

Saturday
Out of respect for completeness, we’ll urge you to go to the Homecoming football game, even though you probably already are planning on it. Kickoff is at 12:30 p.m. which means you should probably get there about 5 hours early.

The “Thanks to Berkeley …” PhotoBooth will be taking even more portraits from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. We hear participants even get candy as recompense. A stranger asking young people to be photographed in a covered booth in exchange for candy? You’d be foolish not to do it!

Sunday
Richard Goode, a pianist with the necessary flair to do justice to such classical greats as Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven and Bach, will be playing at Zellerbach Hall promptly at 3 p.m. Tickets are available from Cal Performances.

Image Source: minwoo under Creative Commons
Homecoming [Site]
Student Homecoming Week [Site]

With the help of Moccasio, a new business founded by for whom Henry West–a senior majoring in economics at USC–is a student advisor, stadium-goers can skip the long concession lines and just text their order without ever moving. After a payment is made over the phone, the order is received by a Moccasio worker (all USC students), and the grub can be picked up from any of the concession stands via a special texters-only line. Ha! Take that students without a texting plan!

The only snag is that for many stadium seat potatoes (get it? Like couch potatoes?) the USC stadium is a dead zone, and their order isn’t received until after the game is over. Although dining in while watching the game live is currently only a feature of the USC stadium student section, the student moguls have plans to expand, and we have a feeling we’re on that list. We’d like to think we wouldn’t stoop so low as to actually make a deliberate effort to seek out stadium munchies. We’ll walk the extra couple feet to maintain our snacking integrity, damnit.

[Editor's Note: Post edited for accuracy.]

Image Source: Trent Bigelow under Creative Commons
New student business gives fans Coliseum food, without the wait [Daily Trojan]

It’s about time we respond to your comments. This week we received a little outside research from our readers, so we decided to share some recommended reading for you all. You don’t even have any real homework just yet, so you might as well take a look.

First, we got some anti-tree sentiment from aaronrodgersforpresident on Science Suffers Several Severe Setbacks:

There are two of us, both Cal alums, putting together some shirts for the early 2008 season, celebrating the removal of Runningwolf, Dumpster Muffin, and all affiliated hemp-wearing, patchouli-smelling, GED-earning, tree-sitting douchebags.

Here’s a taste…
http://www.zazzle.com/mhengehold

Wow. That’s extreme, even for us. Although could we recommend that your “Go Back to Your Dumpster” T-shirt bear a muffin instead of the chainsaw? We think a bran muffin would be lovely.

And then we got a link to a self-made vid from 000 Montgomery on This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse: Ray Dying in the Streets:

Loves it. Especially the creepy, conspiracy theory techno music and the satellite zoom to the very obviously dead ray. We’re not sure we’re supposed to be laughing at this, but we just can’t help it.

We can’t until next week, when our readers give us some more zany material to work with. C’mon, we know you have it in you.

Image Source: cindy47452 under Creative Commons

Tedford announced the starting quarterback for Cal’s first football game of the season (Aug. 30!) against Michigan State, and it ain’t Longshore.

Tedford didn’t explain why he chose Riley instead, though. Could it be tied to Nate’s preseason happiness and possible (read: speculative) secret weapon? Is it all an elaborate plot? Conspiracy?! Conspiracu!

And besides, Tedford said Longshore will get to play against Michigan State, he just doesn’t know “exactly when.” So expect a lot of variability come next Saturday, and if all goes well, maybe another winning season.

Image Source: The Daily Californian
Tedford Names Riley Starter for Season Opener [Daily Cal]
Earlier: Who’s a Pessimist? Not Longshore