Here is the secret-not-so-secret online Nunnian shrine made by the loving 05 UMich TASPers. Enter our homology. We are Triumphant in Turquoise--and all other colors. WORRRRD.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Motown Fix

Last week, while I was in the music library looking for a recording of "Take Five" (I'm starting a jazz combo with a couple of other people and they want to play "Take Five", so I'm trying to figure out a bass line), I stumbled across "Hitsville USA", a 4-CD compilation of Motown hits! In fact, I believe Dylan had this very one with him at TASP. Good stuff, and rife with good memories.

5. Pride and Joy - Marvin Gaye
4. Cloud Nine - The Temptations
3. Shop Around - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
2. I Heard It Through the Grapevine - Gladys Knight & the Pips
1. He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' - The Velvelettes

Groetjes,
Sam

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I'm really bad at this

So, weekend before last, I went to Boston. A bunch of my friends from home were, for various reasons, going to be reassembled in Boston, coming from Chicago, D.C., and Maine. They called me on Wednesday to get me to come, and I took the train down on Friday. And this impromptu trip up north led to the most beautiful of all things...

A TASP REUNION! And yes, I'm just blogging about it now, a week and a half later. Also, I forgot my camera. I told you I was bad at this.

Anyway, I swung by MIT to visit Charles late on Friday night. He showed me the wonders of MIT, and many there were. The collages on all the rooms of his dorm make Yale's dorms like pretty sterile. And the double-decker couch, the double-decker couch! So, Charles and I caught a bit of a movie I wasn't nearly drunk or male enough to appreciate, Super Troopers. I acquired, along with Charles' company for the evening, an excellent free map of Boston...from a loading dock full of MIT take-it-or-leave-it stuff, like a printer and paraffin wax. Anyway, I was staying at Harvard, so I had to grab the last T train. And of course I forgot my cell phone in the dorm. When Charles called it, his dormmates pretended that it was a wrong number, leading to the most confusing 10 minutes of my weekend.

On Saturday night, Dylan, Charles, a couple of my friends and I all met up at this bar called Pourhouse for dinner. Delicious burgers for $2.50. And all we had to do to get them was spend 45 minutes fighting our way up in line, past the other equally aggressive bands of ravenous college students. The free Boston map, and the fact that I never clean out my bag turned out to be handy, since my friend got off at a random T stop and was lost about five blocks from Pourhouse and needed directions. After dinner, we returned to my friend Alexandra's suite and played that game that I think was on "Family Feud"; you know the one where you have a word and have to make your team guess what it is my describing it? Yeah, we did that, and it got pretty intense. The only solution was to go eat ice cream, and so we did.

Also, funny story unfortunately not related to TASPers. Alexandra won a free lunch on Saturday at an Ethiopian restaurant for her and ten friends. She informed us while we were walking over that a man would be "talking to us until our meal comes." We found that sort of unusual, and she explained that he was a financial adviser. He thought we were a small business, and that we were ten of her co-workers, something she didn't feel the need to explain to us until it was too late. She and another friend, Sarah S., entered the restaurant. The man said, "Are you with Alexandra?" Alexandra said yes, and instead of saying that she was Alexandra, she just called the next girl to enter, Sarah P., Alexandra, pretending that Sarah was her. Not because Alexandra needed to, but because she was too lazy to correct him and decided to just call someone else Alexandra for convenience's sake. So we pretended we worked for a small business for twenty minutes and got a free meal. But we're never trusting Alexandra to plan anything ever again. Especially since the last time she was in charge of getting food, she accidentally ordered a $60 whole Peking Duck.

But anyway, the reunion was very exciting. It was an all around ace weekend. The guy in my Latin American Short Fiction class from another TASP wasn't enough of a fix for me.

A last note: I'm pretty sure I'm going to Bonnaroo this summer with some friends. Is anyone else in on that?

Monday, February 19, 2007

Oh yeah - Presidents' Day Eve addendum

(and by the way, is it Presidents' Day or President's Day? I figure it belongs to at least George and Abe, even if other ex-executives may not always be deemed deserving of a national holiday, so I'm going with the plural version.)

P.S. I was going to address Jason's query about my prospective membership in the class of 2012. I'm turning 19 in July and, as many 19-year-old Mormon males choose to do, I'm taking two years off from school to serve as a missionary. I'll spend this time doing service and spreading the gospel, as well as possibly learning a new language. I don't know where I'm going it, but it could be almost anywhere in the world other than a warzone or a Middle Eastern/North African nation (countries where missionaries are either not safe or not permitted into). Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about it all. I plan to turn in my paperwork in May; this should allow me to find out where I'm going towards the end of July, perhaps, and leave around the beginning of September.

The two years of missionary work are going to push my graduation date back to 2012, hence my comment on Henrik's post. I think the toughest thing about my missionary service is going to be parting from my freshman class - they'll all be seniors when I return. But being a missionary is definitely going to be worth it.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Presidents' Day Eve Reflections

Hurrah for Henrik getting into Oberlin! I'm psyched, even if it means California will be less one TASPer.

Anybody have definite summer plans yet? I'm applying for summer research programs in math, so far ones at University of Minnesota Duluth, Oregon State, and Cal Poly Pomona; I'm also looking at CS research here at Stanford, at UC Santa Cruz, or at University of Rhode Island. Or maybe I'll get lucky and find a programming job here in the Valley. On va voir.

School continues as usual: math, computer science, and writing. My humanities class this quarter is on the epic, and is featuring quite the selection of ancient/medieval depictions of gore, including the Odyssey and of course the Song of Roland ("Roland feels his death is near/Through his ears his brains are seeping"). My writing and rhetoric class has us researching violence in the media, so I'm preparing to write a paper about the rhetoric of America's Army (the US Army's new computer-game-cum-recruiting-device) in online gaming communities, comparing its role to that of Counter-Strike. To my surprise, I've discovered that the Stanford libraries have an excellent collection of computer and video games - including about 4 distinct versions of our cherished, mind-corrupting Grand Theft Auto.

I miss you guys. I was realizing recently that several of my acquaintances here remind me a great deal of individual TASPers - maybe my college experience is just an expanded version of the TASP experience-paradigm that I formed two summers ago, and I gravitate towards people who fit into the mold of my ideal TASP-like world. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I'd gone to Cornell instead and lived in T-House, so I could hang out with ex-TASPers and Nunnites all the time - but Stanford is pretty sweet.

Did any of you manage to get in on reading TASP applications this year? I was going to email the other Stanford TASPers and see if anybody had leads on how I could get involved, but I haven't got around to it yet and the hour is getting late.


5. Bad Moon Rising - CCR
4. Things Have Changed - Bob Dylan
3. Ain't Wastin' Time No More - Allman Brothers
2. Bientot - Coralie Clement
1. Crazy Love - Allman Brothers

Groetjes,
Sam

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Good old Lyndon...

This afternoon, on the escalator up from the boarding platform of the Downtown Berkeley BART station, I heard a chorus singing in perfect harmony, almost as if Christmas got misplaced by a month and a half or so. As I made it to the ticket machine level of the station I saw that the choir was in fact singing a clever little ditty about impeaching Mr. Bush, his guilt in mass genocide, etc. I started laughing uncontrollably, a state that was only aggravated when I noticed that this choir (they had a conductor and everything) were a bunch of LaRouche-ites. That's the best I've seen yet from their kind. I'm working on a scheme to pit the LaRouche cultists in gladitorial combat against the Scientologists who daily man the Powell St. BART stop in San Francisco offering free "Stress Tests" to passersby. Maybe I can reserve Memorial Stadium (which is about two doors down from my dorm, and the site of a tree-sitting encampment over the University's attempt to cut down a grove of adjacent oaks in order to build a new sports facility) and use the football field for the kind of violent, blood-filled ceremony our pigskin celebrities try to emulate, but only in expurgated mimickry.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Oh man,

SOOOOOOOOO,

How are all the good ol' TASPers doing!? It's been a while since I've posted, I know, and yes I've been busy.......

Getting into OBERLIN! HAHA!

Last week I was accepted into the college early decision, and since then my workload here at the Idyllwild Arts Academy has been relatively obliterated (I still have 13 classes, but now they're much more manageable). The college process was so arduous and hectic and stimulating and degrading - man o man, I wish I would have just done it earlier. But all in all, things here in Idyllwild are going quite swell. My Jazz Guitar is improving drastically, I'm slowly understanding the fine techniques of shading when painting, I've developed a keen environmental eye, and my spanish has taken that intermediate step from literal to vocal. And of course, there are those other classes that are chewing my brain - like Isaac once mentioned in an earlier post, I feel like goblins are throwing their chemical potions into my cauldron like brain, as it slowly brews an encompassing vision.

In about a month I have an audition for the Oberlin Conservatory, the ultimate test of my skills. I'm not banking on anything, considering I've only begun Jazz Guitar this year, but according to some students who are there right now, competition is not fierce. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

But if I do get in, that means I'll be doing the rigorous, 5-year long Double Degree program. Something I've been warned about from other people, something I've been attracted to ever since I heard about the college.

But alas, I gotta go, this Blog is quite uneventful yet informative, but I have so much more to say! One day, when I have more time.

It seems all is well, as one could expect of you all. I can't wait until I see some of you again (any californians up for Spring Break?), and best wishes for the future.

Henrik

1. Whippersnapper - Wayne Krantz
2. Blue Tail Fly - Leadbelly
3. The entire Ry Cooder & Ali Farke Toure album
4. Birds, Wires - Michael Chorney
5. 4 on 6 - Wes Montgomerey