Weekend Shenanigans by Allan K. '17

This weekend, in some order, I:

1. slept for twelve hours straight in one night
2. watched experienced the Rocky Horror Picture Show, live
3. learned about cornhole
4. went to Nightmarket

It was a very good weekend.

Because that’s how it is in my head, let’s go through these in a totally arbitrary order, starting with number 2.

My first exposure to Rocky Horror was, to the chagrin of many, actually a fairly watered-down version adapted by Glee in season 2, episode 5. I won’t say much about Rocky Horror other than that it is very much an experience more than it is a show. Involved: corsets, crossdressing, lipstick, aliens, sexual objectification, and tons of music and dancing. I highly recommend it as a Halloween activity, if not necessarily for the content, then at least for the musical value and street cred. Here’s one of the first songs:

One more thing about Rocky Horror: for some reason, the showing started at midnight. More on this. For now, let’s do a time warp and go back a couple hours.

It was about 2:00, Friday afternoon. I had just gotten out of my last lecture of this short but nevertheless long-feeling three-day week, differential equations, and I was hanging out with one of the campus FOCUS missionaries (they’re awesome). He spotted some of the other missionaries on Kresge lawn playing ball, and a few minutes later we had formed teams for a game of cornhole.

“What,” you might ask, “in the world is cornhole?”

As an Asian-American growing up in California, I had personally never heard of cornhole.

Essentially, there are two wooden blocks, shaped like wedges of cheese, with a small hole cut into each near the top center. Simply put, the goal is to land beanbags onto the wedges (one point), or into the holes (three points) if you’re feeling particularly talented. Harder than it seems–beanbags are not aerodynamic. But after playing for thirty minutes or so, I got the hang of it (sort of) and even landed a few beanbags into the hole. It was a surprisingly idyllic way to spend a Friday afternoon, tossing beanbags and footballs around with a nice breeze blowing through the trees. I do hope this nice weather stays as long as possible (guess I’m a California boy at heart).

Back on topic. That night, at 8:00, I went to Nightmarket. Nightmarket, hosted by the three biggest Asian cultural clubs on campus, mirrors the East Asian phenomenon of the nighttime street market, associated with pretty lights and tons of delicous food. MIT Nightmarket threw in a glorious slew of performances, ranging from Chinese yo-yo tricks to Western yo-yo tricks, Taiko drumming, Korean, drumming, traditional and contemporary performances by the esteemed MIT Asian Dance Team, an extremely colorful bhangra performance, and many more that I’m sure I’m forgetting. People came all the way from Harvard and Wellesley to attend and perform. It was wonderfully immersive and super-Asian; to tell the truth, I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite as much as I did (my high school was and still is around 85% Asian), but Nightmarket was so well put-together and just generally a great time. Pictures follow:

Bhangra! A very colorful, very energetic Punjabi genre of folk dance.

The one, the only, the amazing MIT Asian Dance Team.

In which this guy uses a yo-yo to…demonstrate his mastery of physics? Look badass? All of the above?

Speaking of badass: taiko percussion, which originates in Japan but was kindly brought to Nightmarket by Wellesley Aiko.

After Nightmarket, I headed over, with some old friends and some freshly-made friends, to Rocky Horror, which for some reason started at 11:59 PM and ended a few hours later. I crawled to Next House exhausted, stopped in the lounge to talk about Thevenin equivalency (three cheers for 8.022 Electricity and Magnetism, affectionately nicknamed “eight-oh-QQ”), and found myself in bed shortly thereafter. When I woke up again it was 5:00 PM on Saturday.

I regret nothing.

See you soon,

Allan