Slip 'n Slide

I didn't realize this made it onto YouTube. Most of the seniors have probably already seen this, but it's still pretty sweet.

P.S. Turn down sound before watching.

N=R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

After a successful Lowell reunion party, including a 5-A-Day Live presentation, rousing games of kickball and check, seeing Valarie Niager (sp?) for the first time in about 5 years, and having my second ice cream cake of the day, I am understandably tired. However, I believe I have enough energy in these old sausage fingers of mine to bring you up to date on some pressing matters.

First: I will not be speaking at graduation. My sources tell me that it came down to myself and Sara Swenson, and Ms. Swenson was selected on the grounds that she spoke louder at the audition. Also, the students might have enjoyed my speech too much.

But seriously folks, I wish Ms. Swenson all the best. Honestly, I'm glad that I can just look forward to sitting around and being entertained at graduation. I think I'll bring some enormous beachballs.

Second: You can always tell when you've done a good job in filling out a survey for the Brainerd Daily Disgrace when Jason Houle, approaching you for the first time since the article has been published, greets you by yelling "You're such a tremendous douchebag!"

Here is the important part of the article:


Maxwell Kuehn

Class rank: No. 2.

Vital statistics: He is 18 and was born and raised in Brainerd. He currently lives in northwest Brainerd. His parents are Martha and Carter Kuehn. His sister, Maya, 21, is a senior at Northwestern University.

Activities: Tennis, basketball, playing Illuminati, reading comics and failing to use parallel construction.

Part-time work: Waiting tables at Lost Lake Lodge.

For relaxation: Calculus

Future plans: Attend Northwestern University, major in art history.

Most memorable high school moment: "This one time I saw Mr. Hewitt lift a car over his head."

Words to live by: "I work without a net, dangling precariously on the edge of genius and insanity, glory and despair, acceptance and rejection." - Tay Stevenson


Steve Kohls took that gem of a photo. Mad props to Mrs. Lundgren for providing me with the lab coat and a variety of sciency curios and gew-gaws.


Third: I signed up for my Freshman Seminar things today. I think I'll probably end up in the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program thing, exploring notions of the Good Society and whatnot. In addition to that, I plan to take a German class, some Intro to Psych thing, and a bitchin' looking course called Intro to Astrobiology.

Awww yeah, astrobiology. Good times.

Somewhere In That Ancient Crappy Trinity

Some say 3 is the magic number. I say it's a pretty shitty number. Consider the following:

-There are currently three enormous movies out.
-They are each the third in their respective series
-They are each taking up three movie screens at Movies 10

The number 3 has conspired to push Hot Fuzz out of Brainerd, and indeed, the entire state of Minnesota, if Yahoo Movies is to be trusted.

Sorry, Simon. Not even you can stop Shrek.

I guess Disturbia is taking up the tenth screen, so it deserves some of the blame. Very well: Fuck you, Disturbia.

By the way, it says "balls" on your forehead.

I have been wanting to write something on the blog for quite sometime, and still I have nothing worthwhile to say. It seems I was born into this world with knowledge and imagination, but with a complete lack of writing skills. (as seen in that last statement) So I sit here thinking about what to write and *blinking light* an idea hits me. Instead of writing something meaningful, write something where the reader feels like he just lost 5 minutes of his life. Here we go:

Yesterday was my first day at Boardwalk. It was a decent job, I got to deliver pizzas for an hour or so and washed dishes for the next four hours. Hopefully I get to start making pizzas soon, that looks like kind of a fun job. Of course that is the same thing I thought about the movie theater and boy was I wrong. Recieve order, fill order, make change, send customer to watch one of the crappy mainstream movies, rinse, repeat. Only if the world was full of people who would not listen to movie commercials that say one of the many,"This movie is the next (fill in any classic movie). It makes (fill in any good, recent movie) look like a walk in the park." Oh well I can't change the world. Sill though people WATCH HOT FUZZ!

Finally I was watching Garden State yesterday again and couldn't stop laughing at this:

Grad Party June 10th: Clear Your Calenders

Well it's late May of my senior year of high school, which means I'm contracturally obligated to Reflect On Days Gone By. Here we go:

I will miss many things about Brainerd High School. I will miss passing Alan Hewitt in the hall and being completely ignored. I will miss all of the terrific shirts, such as Scott Pagel's "Oh Crap...I'm 50" shirt. I will miss jazz band. And Ron Gilbertson...well, I think I'll miss him most of all.

I believe A.P. Physics has surpassed A.P. U.S. History as my second favorite all-time class, and some days it vies with A.P. Art History for supremacy.

Now, A.P. Physics was not exactly your typical A.P. class. We weren't exactly "busy as beavers." We didn't really have our "noses to the grindstone." Our studies weren't precisely "exhaustive." But I learned a ridiculous amount about a very interesting subject, and I'm cautiously optimistic about maybe getting a 4, so I didn't mind what some COUGH*TIRTH PATEL*COUGH might have considered to be a lack of academic rigor.

The main attraction of this class was not the actual course material (it was unusual if we got to more than about 25 minutes of physics a day); it was the man running the show. Ronald Gilbertson is basically the Jay Gatsby of high school teachers--he's the Platonic conception I imagine other teachers have of themselves: eating apples from his personal mini-fridge, passing out "Diner Lingo" worksheets, doing Geroge Carlin stand up.

The only difference is, with Gilby you don't get the sense that there's some boring square lurking beneath the layers of quirks. All evidence points to the fact that Gilby is Gilby 24-7, even when nobody's watching. Example: Sam and I went up to ask Gilbertson something during his open hour, and when we walked in he was standing three feet from the television, arms crossed, watching a soap opera. He turned towards us after a moment, got us what we needed, bid us farewell, and went back to his stories.


Gilbertson is like an excellent character in a long-running sitcom: he's well-developed (just like a real person!), yet flexible enough that he can keep coming up with new bits and revealing new traits that add to his personality without contradicting anything that came before. Just today, I thought up a few new quirks Gilby could whip out in the last couple of weeks:

1. Close class by saying "See you tomorrow kids. Same Bat time, same Bat channel."
2. Wear a spinning bow tie.
3. Put a duct tape cross on the floor in the front of the room, walk across the room, stop and turn on the cross, and say "Found my mark."

I would be especially pleased if that last one came to pass.



P.S.: I'm not saying that Ron Gilbertson is better than Stu Lade. He's just different.
P.P.S.: Please feel free to add your own favorite Gilby memory to the comment thread.

Contract This

Bittersweet news today guys.


The Lincoln is totally dead--the Mobil guys couldn't get it to turn over, so they drained the oil, which the discovered was full of shaved off bits of metal. Not an overly good sign. The next step would be to rip out the whole engine (for $200) and discover a much more expensive problem underneath.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I will soon commit the Lincoln's earthly remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which it loved so well...seriously though, it's getting towed to the junkyard in the next couple of days, after I go down with a paper bag and pull out my meager belongings.

Good-bye, Lincoln. You drank a lot of gas, but you were a good car. We hardly knew ye.

1989-2007; R.I.P.

Now, speaking of hardly knowing ye, onto the moderately shocking revelation from my father this morning. The Lincoln's original owner, the man who bought it new and drove it until he traded it in and my grandma purchased it, was none other than former used car dealer and current commisioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig:

Allan Huber "Bud" Selig, Jr.; Commisioner of MLB, 1998-Present

Yep, that Bud Selig. Fucked up, eh?

As I said, this shit is bittersweet. It's awesome that the Lincoln had some genuine high class credentials and connections to the proffesional sports world, but now that the Lincoln is dead, I won't be able to brag as effectively about it.

Life is tough.

Seen And Not Seen

Had a rather surreal tennis match today.

We were at Tech, in their secondary facility, near some shitty middle school. Sounds mild-mannered, I know, but trust me: things were rather eerie up in there.

First of all, the wind was blowing a steady 25 mph, gusting to about 35 or so, and the middle school building is either A: haunted or B: specially designed to funnel any wind into a haunting wail.

The wind also served to carry a mysterious hammering sound from the nearby basesball complex. Thanks to the ridiculous 12 foot granite wall surrounding said complex, I was forced to walk a short ways to get a view of what was going on: a stone structure was being demolished by an enormous excavator with some sort of jackhammer attachement on the end of its arm. It was very cool. I stood there and watched it for about 30 seconds while it hammered away and dust swirled about it.

Finally, the tennis courts also abutted the local fire department, which, for some reason, apparently has its communication system wired to an outdoor loudspeaker. So as we played we got to hear some dispatchers talking about sending out trucks and calling in squad cars.

Oh, and I won my match; talk about surreal.

(Yes, I had planned out that line before I played. If I would have lost I would have written "Well, at least one thing was normal; I lost my match.")

P.S.: I got a mysterious letter from John Ward today, congratulating me for graduating from high school. Did anybody else get one of these things?

Must Go Faster

I've decided that the best way to avoid stressing about A.P. tests is to take as many of them as possible. My data indicates that there's an inverse relationship between the number of AP tests taken and the total freak-out level attained. Consider the following:

Sophomore year
Like all reasonable persons, I took on U.S. History as my sole A.P. class. I got more worked up about that class than really pretty much anything ever. If, on the eve of the test, you'd asked me if I would accept a full-ride scholarship to the college of my choice, on the condition that I would only get a 4 on the APUSH test, I would have hesitated, then turned you down.

Here's a semi-embarassing story to convince you of the magnitude of my monomania: One day, a few weeks before the test, I took a break from re-re-re-reading about the War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention (downfall of the Federalists, that ol' convention was) to watch that pitch-perfect cinematic masterpiece, Independence Day. As I watched Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, fresh off their defeat of the alien menace, strut across the salt flats, smoking victory cigars and playfully punching each other in the arm, I seriously thought "Wow, that must be what it's like to get a 5 on the A.P. U.S. History test."

I realize this image is kinda crappy, and from an earlier part of the film, and I really identified more with Jeff Goldblum, but it was all I could find, and ideally the flightsuit and cigar should jog your memory about the part of the movie I'm talking about

The test ended up being pretty easy. In fact, I was kind of miffed that so many people got the same grade as me. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten like a 6 or a 7 if these tests were graded by people and not soulless machines.

Junior year
I took three tests, Chemistry, Art History, and Lit. I was ridiculously prepared for Chem, but that was more Lundgren's doing than my own, and Lit...well, they apparently decide Lit grades by random drawing, so there wasn't much I could do there. Really I only obsessed about Art History, and even then my fixation didn't approach its U.S. History levels.

Senior year
I have 6 tests, I've done basically no special preperation for any of them, and I'm feeling light-hearted and, as I commented earlier, sanguine. I guess I knew that there was no way I could have possibly over-prepared for these tests to the extent that I'd done so in the past, so I just took it easy. There's no way to tell until mid-July, but I think this strategy is working out pretty well so far.


P.S.: Every time I say or hear something now, I subconciously translate it into German.

P.P.S.: Work sucks. But then I suppose that's why they pay me to do it.

Tipping Is Not A City In China

Alright, it's been a while since I rapped to ya, and what with my coal-miner-like work schedule and pile of homework/studying to do, it'll probably be a healthy spell before I get back and spill again. BUT I think today's experience warrents staying up a few more minutes.

So I was driving the trusty ol' Lincoln to work this afternoon, listening to my Power Loon driving mixtape (it's like the greatests songs the Power Loon would ever play, back to back to back). When I stopped at the Wise Road, getting ready to turn right onto 371, I noticed my car was vibrating; not enough to shake me around, but enough to get my mirrors really shaking. I thought little of it, but when I tried to accerlate out onto the highway, I ended up drifting off to the side of the road instead. The mighty Lincoln was dead.

With my mom on a long walk and my dad running errands, I knew that the parentals were not going to be my speediest option for a ride to work. So, I called my grandma up and described my predicament. Being a good grandma, she set out to pick me up.

Normally I would have been proud of myself for being so resourceful. This afternoon, however, Fortuna decided to screw around with me a little bit. Moments after I got off the phone with my grandma, a co-worker happened to stop, waiting to turn right onto 371, and asked if I needed a ride.

Now, my grandma is a good grandma, and I love her very much, but while I wouldn't call her a technophobe, she doesn't exactly have a subscription to Wired; nor, for that matter, does she own a cell phone. Therefore, I couldn't exactly accept another ride--my grandma would come eventually, see the abandoned Lincoln and no beloved grandson, and before you'd know it we'd have an Amber Alert on our hands. In seeking to free myself from my broken down car, I'd effectively anchored myself to it. Oh, sweet irony. I politely turned her down.

That would have been bad enough. But I got to turn down not one, but TWO more ride offers in the 20 minutes it took my grandma to arrive (she'd ended up on the wrong side of the highway; to be fair, my directions had been pretty vague.): One from Megan Saley's mom Char, a former co-worker, and another from a nattily attired Stuart Lade, dressed in his Sunday best, headed for a wedding in his olive green Saab.

Fuckin' ridiculous.

heir to the throne.

i'm not really sure if we're allowed to discuss this.

but the next in line to take over paul melby:

rich berggren...the director at eden prairie.

i love this choice for the BHS music department. not only did we find someone with experience (13 years worth) but eden prairie has long been one of the better bands in the twin cities area. i think everyone should be pretty stoked/in good hands next year.

i know this post pertains to a very small faction of the mustache faithful, but it's decent-sized news.

mustache out!

ps: line of the day (yesterday)

mr. barnett: (referring to the movie) "when the lights go out, the learning comes on."
rachel lindman: (innocent rachel!) "that's what SHE said."

it boggles the mind.

so i just finished watching lost. (but that's not the point.) and i decided to check my e-mail quickly before i went to bed.

and...the screen read, "you have 12 new messages."

now i was expecting one or two new ones, but twelve? this seemed out of the ordinary.

so i went to my inbox.

nothing.

after looking high and low for these elusive e-mails, i realized that i had more than one page of e-mails to go through. so i went to look at the very last page.

and sitting--at the bottom of the screen--were 12 e-mails ranging in dates from august 10th to august 30th, 2002.

2002. as in...almost 5 years ago.

a few of them were from my grandmother pre-alzheimers. some were from old walker friends. some from people i forgot even existed. ...and all of them were from 2002.

i don't know what to make of this.

mustache out.

ps. i will be at school tomorrow.

Ear Status: Lowered

I got a haircut today...in fact, I got 'em ALL cut.

Last time around I just buzzed it down and let the magic of hair growth do the rest. In the here and now, however, with charm-based work as a waiter rapidly approaching, I needed to get to the hygenic-yet-stylish micro-fro right away, without the intermediate skinhead/snakehandler buzz-cut look. My solution? I brought in a grad picture to Cost Cutters, got lucky and snagged the bustling managerial-looking veteran stylist, and got a passable trim. It does resemble my hair in my grad photos, as exemplified by this inspirational image:

Man, would you look at the ivory column of a neck?

Ideally, this coiffure should be short enough to avoid any health code violations, yet long enough to get the mad tipz from the old women who say "I would KILL for hair like that!"


P.S.: Green Day is an okay band.

P.P.S.: Mr. Kubas, look at this photo. Look at the lost young man to your left. Look at the then chipper, nowadays downcast young woman on your left.

From left to right: Koreann Martin, a taxidermied bohemian, Max Kuehn

Come back to us, Kubassi. How ya gonna turn down a face like that?

nothing quite like it.

i'm assuming that most of you know, but there are probably a few who have not heard yet,

but i have mono.

so i've been stuck at home for the last 2 weeks or so. and let me say: it is insanely boring.

so today i really looked forward to getting out of the house and taking some lovely ap tests.

morning test: ap spanish. this test was originally meant to go from 8:00-11:30, nothing too difficult. but...once we entered the language lab and tried to record ourselves we ran into a number of fun problems. by the time we got out of the room it was 1:00. keep in mind, i was supposed to take a stats test starting at noon. i'm pretty sure i dominated the spanish exam...it was really easy and the essay/speaking section (which are probably the two toughest parts) were both in easy tenses, so it really involved no thinking at all.

after a very quick lunch, good ol' DJ (mr. doug johnson) decided to stay and give the three kids in both ap spanish and stats the statistics test at washington. (what a gentleman) so...we started at about 1:15 and got out of washington at around 4:50. fun. (we were originally supposed to get done at about 3:00) now, i know what past ap stats kids have said..."it's the easiest AP test!" well, i don't exactly know what it was this year...but stats was insane. the multiple choice was ungodly easy...but the open ended questions were just crazy. when we got finished with our break, the other group (the kids who were testing on time) finished their tests and all talked about how difficult the test was. and then we opened our packets...and i had to agree. i'm not blaming mr. pelkey--i think he prepared us well--but no one was really ready for that stuff.

i don't know if i'm technically "allowed" to talk about this, but i don't care. i have mono. this was the most excitement i've had in weeks.

tomorrow: i'm mowing the lawn!!

i'll see those of you (at BHS) on monday.

mustache out!

Neither Short Nor Sweet

How I Am Feeling About My A.P. Tests Right Now

econ>lang>>calc>german>>working as a waiter at lost lake lodge this summer*>>physics

KEY:
>=feeling more confident about than (i.e. pacman eats the test I'm feeling better about)
*included for scale

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Three items today (Item 1 may be a little slow, but stick around for items 2 and 3!):

1. Although tennis has not been terribly succesful (at least in terms of the actual sport of tennis) this year, I'd say I'm doing pretty well at the two parts of the tennis team that I consider to be the most important: the movie game and gatorball.

The movie game is the activity of choice in the back of the bus while traveling to and from away meets. The first person names a movie (example: Pulp Fiction), the next person names an actor from that movie (Steve Buscemi), the third person names another movie with that actor (Fargo), and so on, until a participant is unable to think of another movie with an actor/another actor in a movie. They may then challenge. If the previous player is unable to name another actor in the movie they named/movie with the actor they named, the challenger picks a new film and the game continues. If the challenged player comes up with another actor/movie, however (William H. Macy), then the challenger is out of the game.

It is a fun game, and I tend to be pretty good at it, if for no other reason than I seem to have the requisite knowledge of action movies necessary to hang with the teenage boy crowd, plus a slightly more obscure set of movies I can bring up to knock people out (mostly Cohen Bros. and killers like "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"). In other venues I'm not so successful--when I tried playing this with my parents and aunt before I got completely destroyed--but I was 4 for 4 on the bus ride home.

Gatorball is an enjoyable, made-for-phys-ed sort of game, played with the eponymous spheroid--a ball filled with a foam heavy enough to allow for long throws, yet light enough so that getting whaled in the face doesn't hurt too much. I don't wanna into the dirty details, so let's just say that it's a far more athletic activity than actually playing tennis, and now that Messers Houle, Holbrook, Smith, and Valesano have departed, I'm one of the better players.

2. So the AP news service has been asking the leading presidential candidates some personal questions lately. The last one was What is your "favorite fitness activity?" and, not that I'm racist or sexist or classist or anything, but I found the responses rather amusing:

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: Weightlifting

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Speed walking

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: Basketball

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: Horseback riding and tennis

Now Joe, Hillary, and Barack I can understand here. They all did their best to use this question as an opportunity to emphasize the traits they want to make more prominent: everymanness (to coin an excellent word), womanliness, and blackness, respectively. But what is Bill thinking? "Horseback riding and tennis"? Is he trying to emphasize his wealth and priviledge in the hopes that the American people will recognize him as their superior and vote for him out of deference? In any case, I've concluded that the candidates did not go far enough in their responses. My reccomendations:

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: Punching out cattle, resurfacing pick-up truck beds

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Cooking, cleaning, nagging

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: Running from police

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: Touring the grounds on a jewel-encrusted litter carried by a team of manservants

You're welcome, Mr/s. Future President.

3. I'm thinking I'm gonna cut all my hair off one of these days. Probably a buzz cut, for simplicity's sake. The big hair has become a burden once again, the weather's getting warmer, and I have a feeling Lost Lake Lodge might not be thrilled about a waiter having an out-there afro. Although I suppose I could go for the "Rugged and Unorthodox"-type waiter: stubble, unkempt hair, tight t-shirts, opening up bottles of wine with a bowie knife and my teeth. People like that, right?

Oooooor I could go for the clean-cut fella with the buzz cut and an irritating perchant for answering any rhetorical scientific queries his customers happen to pose to one another and correcting any economic fallacies they happen to make in conversation. Oh man, I can barely wait to hear some asshole complaining about the national debt, so I can pwn him, then get a 9% tip. Awwww yeah.



P.S.: Spiderman 3--fewer musical numbers, more Bruce Campbell, please.

I'm In Your Cave, Killing Your Bears

In case you haven't heard, there was a false alarm about a school shooter at CLC a few days ago. Since my mom works at CLC, we here at the Kuehn household were a little more closely involved than others: My father recieved an unnerving automated phone call and my mom got to watch the fallout firsthand.

Really the best thing to come out of this whole experience has been this photo of Terry Fairbanks, a teacher in CLC Law Enforcement, walking through the halls with a GODDAMNED M-16. What a dumbass.


I tried a little HILARIOUS photo editing, and of course Paint didn't let me down:In spite of that second image's uncanny awsomeness, I think this picture could be made even more hilarious by a more discerning eye than my own.


For now, I will settle for a CAPTION CONTEST!!!!!

My favorite one so far is "I'm scaring up students for the law enforcement program!"

Whaddya got?

calling all mustaches.

umm...

i am in need of a red tie similar to the giant oval surrounding janet reno.

the picture has a bit of a shadow on it, so a few shades lighter would be ideal.

i am looking to either borrow and/or purchase this tie. i am rich.

or, if you would prefer, any suggestions as to where i can buy a tie of this color would be greatly appreciated.

keep in mind i have tried all of the local shops/stores/merchants and have found no success. many mustache blessings to the loyal and faithful crowd!