Toons and Tasty Burgers by Allan K. '17

11/9/2013:

At the time of this writing:

> I’m sitting in a cozy joint titled “Tasty Burger” with Hairuo, Royal, and Trevor. (They’re cool.)
> Hairuo, Royal, and Trevor are telling me I should double major in Comparative Media Studies. I’m kind of considering it.
> I have yet to see if the burgers are tasty.
> “The Fox” is playing on the speakers. Loudly.
> I ordered an apple juice box which I have just finished.
> There is an amazing mural on the wall of Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction.

This marks the end of a very good start to what will be a very good weekend. First and most importantly, I got nine hours of sleep last night, which I haven’t been able to do for a while. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming here, it’s that sleep is very, very, VERY valuable to me, and I have to work hard to make sure I get enough of it.

Burgers are here. The story continues…later!
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11/10/2013:

The burgers were fairly tasty. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 would be a high school cafeteria burger and 5 would be an In-N-Out double-double, Tasty Burger would fall in the 4 to 4.5 range.

In any case.

This weekend is particularly splendid for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a long weekend. Second of all, I painted figurative rainbows all over my second 8.022 (Introductory Physics Electricity/Magnetism, hard mode) exam last Thursday after getting 9 hours of sleep on a weeknight, which ended up being much better for my test than studying for it. This means a weekend usually spent on 8.022 psets was spent instead catching up on sleep and singing with the Toons. Which brings me to the third reason: two (TWO) performances with my a cappella group, the MIT-Wellesley Toons, whom I dearly love. Look, we’re on the Internet and everything. Here’s a video from our last performance a few weeks ago.

We did a small performance on Friday night at Wellesley, but it was our Saturday evening concert that we’d been preparing for the most. Saturday night was the Eighth Annual MIT-Wellesley Toons Concert for a Cure, a benefit concert for multiple sclerosis which featured not only the Toons but also a ton of amazing groups from other places like Harvard, Olin, Suffolk, and Wellesley. We had too much fun turning the lecture hall 10-250 into a makeshift concert venue by covering the blackboards with silly chalk art and dressing up in official “Tooniforms”: black shirt, black pants, and colored ties for the guys, and colored shirts with suspenders for the gals.

Meet the Olin Powerchords. They’re pretty kick-ass. They shot one of their members on stage at the end of their set, cutting off their last song. Not even kidding–it was a song from a James Bond movie and they ended it by shooting the lead singer with a Nerf pistol.

These delightful fellows are Roadkill Buffet, MIT’s very own improv comedy group. They took the prompt “pickles” and turned it into a ten-minute series of skits featuring the benefits of veganism and eating organic, the need to wear furry boots, a farmer who can’t bear to slaughter his cows for food, and a pastor who hears the cows’ confession of being able to talk. Comedy sure doesn’t make much sense, but that’s what makes it hilarious.

The Wellesley Tupelos came out and rocked the show. They’re named after Wellesley’s Tupelo Point. It’s said that if you kiss your significant other there, you’ll get married to them (or be successful and wealthy in life, depending on which version you subscribe to).

The Harvard Dance Team came out with a performance set to Lady Gaga’s “Applause.” They were pretty great. Major props for being able to do a full performance in a lecture hall without knocking anything down.

Toons getting pumped right before the show!
Some of the other groups who came out included the a cappella groups the Suffolk Ramifications, Harvard Mirch (East Asian/pop mashup a cappella!), Wellesley Dead Serious (more improv comedy), Wellesley Freestyle (daaaance). It was awesome and amazing and we raised a couple hundred dollars for finding a cure for multiple sclerosis. If you’d like to donate to our cause, you can still do so here: http://weblink.donorperfect.com/MIT2013.

Your friend in a cappella burgers,

Allan