Category: Ken Moore

Twenty-four hours ago at this time, I was still talking about the fact that I’d seen Bobby McFerrin and Savion Glover perform, live. Today, at this time, I own Halo 2.

I’d like to have Lisa, Flora, Allison and especially Ken (who turned me on to Halo in the first place) to play the latter with me; I don’t, as they are casualties of my own private diaspora. But I had Maria to go to the show with me, and DC to encounter there. I’ll have the Thursday Night Grandkids to kick my butt at Halo.

Sometimes I feel bad about marking time in my life by video games and concerts, but there are worse ways to do so.

Ken, Maria and I rolled down to l’Centre on Saturday to coo over Lisa’s senior show, which was all very massive color-gradient glass pieces, and awesome. I can’t really describe them to you–she has a couple pics up, but seeing them in three dimensions and with more light was much better.

The next day, Maria and I argued over whether or not I am indie–something for which I vaguely hope, but never considered myself cool enough to achieve. She pointed out that in addition to my mild but distinguished collection of obscure t-shirts, I do know two glassblowers, and that’s some solid cred there. I should have known that in the indie world, friends are primarily status symbols and tools to an end. (And for the record, Maria used to date a rock star, so I’m pretty much never going to be indier than she is.)

Maria is responsible for basically all of this

I got four Hellboys, two Supermans, a tombstone, a whoopee cushion and Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake. I had a gonzo adventure with my friends and we drove off a cliff. I ate two orders of the best ribs in the universe. I won eighteen zillion games of Crimson Skies.

I have to invent a final project from thin air tonight and turn it in tomorrow, but I had a very good birthday.

Last night I forced Ken to eat the worst chicken parmesan I’ve ever made (Maria, wisely, pleaded a weak stomach) and then we made DC come over and randomly watched Empire. Which, you know what? Is a pretty funny movie.

For instance, up until Cloud City, somebody dies every time Darth Vader is on camera. He strangles people who take responsibility, he strangles people through the TV screen, he strangles people while other people pretend not to notice. And then there’s the part where one of the Star Destroyers gets hit by an asteroid, and its captain in the little holo-display looks horrified and disappears, and Vader doesn’t bat an eye. Or doesn’t act like it, anyway. Finally, at the end, after they barely lose the Falcon, Admiral Piett (who’s been standing around nervously as others fall like wheat the whole movie) watches Vader walk off in a cold silence and just swallows once. The expression on his face is great.

Maybe that’s the problem: thinking about the last two movies, I can only remember two jokes that didn’t involve Jar Jar.

Context. Ken, DC, Ian and I went to see Revolutions last night. One of the previews was for Punisher, which features Thomas Jane kicking many, many butts in various styles and fashions.

Payoff. Ian, on watching the preview: “Brendan, look! They already made a movie about Sigurdur Petursson!”

Apparently only my boy friends have blogs.

Yo ho. I emerge from the shark-thick waters, knife in my teeth and a steely glint in my eye, having taken all three of my double-damned midterms in ONE DAY and lived to tell the scurvy tale. Yo ho.

And now, in lieu of booty, I go to Lexington. What reward holds Lexington, you ask? It holds Jon. It holds Monica. It will hold me and Ken and Maria, and most importantly, it will hold ANGIE APARO!

I hated “Too Little Too Late” for a long time. After he picked up the album at Sam Goody in what, September?, Jon left it in his stereo most days; since it doubled as an alarm clock, we’d both wake up to that raucous opening riff every morning, puffy and tired and grouchy. I really resented that guitar, and even though I loved the album, I had to skip the first track to listen to it.

That was the Autumn of Sleepovers, when everyone in our little accidental clique ended up in bed together in some kind of combination. It was all very innocent, except when it wasn’t. And it was all very intimate, and a little desperate, in ways we couldn’t see at the time.

We never had any intention of becoming as self-involved as we did, but that’s the way structures function in small, overeducated, post-adolescent Western society. It tightened until it snapped, and after that we were both more free and more disparate.

I never had any intention of going through an experience like that, either, but I did. I learned a lot when I didn’t think I had much left to learn. I came out the other side still angsty, of course, but I’d grown; I’d also learned how to express myself in cartoons and small sentences. A year later I started this journal, in the small warm shelter of a dorm room shared with Jon and Amanda and sometimes Ken, and the urge to write had some of its origin in the fall of 2000.

I listened to Maroon for the first time in months today, which maybe wasn’t the wisest idea. I’m still at the office, and it’s all very vivid now: nostalgia, unfulfillment and ache.

Amanda, Tara, Lauren, Alison, Rachel, Darren, Ken, and most of all Jon: Forgive me this outburst. I miss you. Come back.

Did I say six of seven? Because officially, it turns out to be twelve of twelve. I generated an entire point release myself! I am Bug Barbecue!

Abruptly and without transition, check out Ken’s twopart account of his trip to Lollapalooza. It’s extreme!

“I, Ken Moore, the person you all know as a calm and not easily excited person, was jumping around and loving every second of it. These guy are the saviors of rock and roll.”

It’s great stuff, and I wish I could have been there, and I’m very glad Ken’s writing regularly.

This is how I graduate: the only Centre commencement in living memory on which it has rained, in alphabetical order yet in the middle of the pack, ending up shivering in the library halfway to the auditorium, which was in neither the sunny nor rainy day plans. Our baccalaureate speaker was a fervent liberal and our keynote speaker a stolid conservative; hackles were raised at each and both. I tried to dry the rain off my glasses and found that polyester robes don’t soak up much.

My apartment has been messily slaughtered, furniture shoved and stolen and hidden mold revealed. One more time I’m the last one to move out. The walls are bare, and most of what I own is in piles on the floor. I’ll never live with Jon or Amanda or David again.

I said goodbye and soon to many, many people, and went to my uncle’s house to see Ken, Jon and Emily one more time and to be astounded by the generosity of my family. I fell asleep sitting up before we came back here. I’m going to pack all night and leave in the morning, which I was explicitly told not to do.

Those of you who know me from my first Governor’s Scholars Program will be gratified to know, I hope, that I brought an umbrella onstage with me at the ceremony. As we were leaving, I ended up facing the wrong way and didn’t notice I was supposed to be moving for several long seconds after the rest of my row had gone. I jumped and cursed onstage (at my own commencement) and scrambled out. I was so flustered I forgot the umbrella.

On my way out to meet my family I stood for a few minutes on the stage in Weisiger. That was the first place I found myself on the first day of GSP, here at Centre; I stood in the dark, having come in out of the rain, and wrote about quiet stages on a chalkboard. Later that night, Milton Reigelman would point it out in his opening convo speech, and I would feel a strange mix of shame and pride at having something I’d written read.

This is how I graduate: I am bone-deep nothing-left weary, and I have miles to go before I sleep. I know my time here is done and I am satisfied with it, and I’m ready and willing and glad to go. I’m hurt and hollow, childish and scared. I want desperately to put off the deep wrench I’m feeling, because it means I’m really leaving home.

The heat appears to operate entirely independent of my control, turning itself on sometime around 10 am and turning itself off around 10 pm. The knobs on some of the radiators don’t turn at all,and the ones that do turn have no effect. I wasn’t under the impression that this was how radiators worked! Evening is interesting, at least, as I have to open windows around 6 and turn the space heater on again by 11.

Things that have distracted me lately:

Del McCoury wins Bluegrass Award! McCoury Band Wins Entertainment Bluegrass! Bluegrass McCoury Wins Entertainment!

And that’s the news from Kentucky.

if I had a penny for my thoughts
I’d be a millionaire