If you answered yes to any of these, you either need a life or are a typical NYU student. Thankfully, fanboy website On Location Vacations updates you on what shows and movies are filming in your area in any given day, perfectly designed to fulfill your celeb-stalking fetishes. The site also posts photos from certain film sets, just in case that you happen to be across the country.

With Gossip Girl making the transfer to “NYU’s campus,” the website is particularly valuable now, especially since our actual campus is always close by yet appears to be nothing like the one on the show. In case you were wondering, Gossip Girl is filming around Elizabeth Street and Bowery in SoHo today. So, maybe you should stop by and invite Blair Waldorf to the real NYU, a.k.a. Downstein.

It is not fall yet, though the weather some days this month might have fooled you into thinking otherwise. But you may have noticed the premature red and gold leaves of autumn littering the north side of Washington Square Park this morning. In addition to the foliage incongruous to the season, there was also a woman steaming clothes outside a nearby trailer. I asked someone hovering near film equipment what was going on he said through a very sheepish smile, “We’re filming an advert for Target.” I wasn’t inclined to believe him. Go check out the scene if you are interested and get back to us with any celebrity sightings.

Avid photo blogger, Nylon favorite and 90210 guest star Cory Kennedy spent her live fast/die young weekend in our beautiful city. But besides looking fly in various parks and lofts in her blog’s most recent photo series, she also took some time to muse on the struggling economy. If Cory says it will be okay, it will be okay.

Her wise words (sic all around):

so the recession is really quite nerve-wracking, and personally really frightens me. america is going through a tough time now and everything on wall street will and is affecting most people including myself. i know its going to get worse before it gets better. with time of course everything gets better day by day… but its a time to all pull together… and we all MUST VOTE. its so important to vote, especially NOW, when the U.S. is in crisis

I mean, things are really hitting close to home for her and “there has been lots of talk going around about uber folding and what not.” Poor girl… Thankfully, this hasn’t impeded her travel to New York City, so keep an eye out for the dishevled princess. Lit Lounge tomorrow night is probably a safe bet.

James Franco hosted the previously mentioned SNL episode on Saturday, September 21st and Columbia, not NYU, hogged the spotlight. During the opening monologue, Franco said he is living in New York now because he is a Columbia student. He then flashed his Columbia ID and launched into a skit barnacled with Columbia references. NYU wasn’t mentioned at all (not only is he enrolled at Tisch, but he’s in Columbia’s MFA Writing program too).

Overall, the episode was pretty lame. Predictably, one skit cast Franco as “Agent 420,” a chronically stoned super-hero. It wasn’t funny at all, especially compared to Pineapple Express (goes to show how much good writing is important). Perhaps the funniest skit was the first, where Franco played the emo boyfriend of a Cuban Cameron Diaz on trashy New York talk show “The Cougars.”

Next time you see James Franco, tell him he should represent NYU a little more.

Photo by Flickr user t a i s used under the Creative Commons

Raise your hand if you’ve seen Born Into Brothels. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Well, it was a critically-acclaimed and award-winning documentary released in 2004 documenting the lives of eight children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district. Now one of those children featured in the documentary has grown up and escaped the life he once knew. Avijit Halder is entering his freshman year here at NYU this fall, and he was recently interviewed by the New York Sun about his experiences growing up and his initial reactions to the hustle and bustle of New York life.

Amid the James Francos and the Liam Aikens and the Mary Kate and Ashleys of NYU’s notoriously celebrity-studded campus, Avijit Halder has a different kind of fame. He probably won’t be recognized on the street. Not because Born Into Brothels wasn’t important, but because he was 11-years-old when the footage was shot, and, well I don’t know about you, but I look much different now than I did when I was 11. And he probably won’t have groupie students hanging around outside the Tisch building chain-smoking without inhaling hoping to catch a glimpse of him (à la Franco, yeah you know who you are). Instead he was a part of something much more significant than a summer blockbuster or a Hollywood reputation – an insightful documentary exposing a facet of the third world that is often overlooked.

I won’t even pretend that I’ve seen Born Into Brothels or that I’ve done extensive research into the content of the film and the impact it has had on sex work in the third world. I do know, however, that the documentary has garnered 96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 103 reviews), and that it won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2004. If I hadn’t canceled my Netflix subscription I’d be adding it to my queue, but instead I’m going to have to venture to Blockbuster this weekend because after reading Avijit’s interview in the New York Sun, I’m very, very interested to see the documentary.

I think Avijit’s presence on campus brings a much-needed diversity that the university claims to have, but students never experience. In my opinion this university, while arguably ethnically diverse, is completely homogenous in most other ways. Mostly that NYU doesn’t give out much in the way of financial aid, so most students are pretty well-off. That, and that most people come from affluent, coastal suburbs. Avijit brings a new kind of diversity to campus in that he grew up in a third world country in unfavorable conditions, and he still made it all the way to New York City. He’s getting a world-class education, and he didn’t do it with the help of a legacy or a check book.

I, for one, hope I run into him. He’s studying film, so maybe I’ll pretend to inhale 15 cigarettes while loitering outside the Tisch building until he comes out.

Photo by Flickr user roxyworld used under a Creative Commons license.

James Franco was spotted toting a backpack about an hour ago on Waverly near Washington Square East. That coupled with the Franco sighting last week at Think on Mercer leads me to believe that Gawker was right, everyone’s favorite stoner is going to Tisch. Anyone sit next to him in class?

Photo: Flickr by and_she_was