Disclaimer: the following does not, in any way, diminish my pride in the wife's accomplishments.

[madbaker]

Also note: she came up with the band joke.

The wife walked in her graduation ceremony Saturday. (She officially graduated back in December, with distinction, but the school only does the ceremony once per year.) I attended along with both our mothers, as well as the upstairs neighbors. Then we went to Zarzuela for yummy Spanish tapas.

Anyway, the graduation. It was... definitely an art school graduation. The commencement speaker was an old Beat poet; his address consisted of three poems (Chaucer, Blake, and Dickenson) and then a composition of his own. Which started with a five-minute video of him yelling "Rawr!" at a caged lion.

	Mine (CMC)	The wife's (CCAC)
school focus	Liberal arts / business-focus	Art
location	School's lawn	Masonic auditorium
"Pomp and Circumstance" entry music	Canned music - the standard boring arrangement	Live, by a klezmer band. The saxamaphonist kept shifting into a minor key, causing us to compare them to the band in Nightmare Before Christmas.
commencement speaker	Robert Mosbacher (then-Secretary of Commerce)	Aforementioned beat poet
Commencement speech	Pretentious political speech, dry and boring.	Pretentious artistic poetry, dry and incomprehensible.
student speaker	Gave a speech in Latin (only the students had a translation) which not-so-gently mocked the school and president.	Two (one undergrad, one graduate). Both gave speeches which no-so-gently mocked the school and president. Especially the latter, who rammed through a change of the school's name.
outfits	Standard gowns and black mortarboards	Standard gowns; black artists' berets.
Alumni association	Instant appeal for donations.	Instant appeal for donations. One of the student speakers had a good line which also applied to my school - "We value our education highly - considering the thousands of dollars we've paid for it."

Comments

Re: I'm sorry I missed it!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that! I thought you had a ticket, but I guess there was a misunderstanding. I hope you didn't have to go too far out of your way for it...

I have to take some of the blame...

[strmonkey.livejournal.com]

Only some of it though. I thought I told Tarik that you guys had it, I may have forgotten because of my on selfishness of going on a trip. But he did try to call me to get your cell phone number. I had already turned off my phone and I didn't get the message until Monday when I got back in the the States. I am so so so sorry!
BUT the Farmers Market was a true adventure. I loved it so much-I wish I had bought some strawberries for our trip, but I didn't know if I could have brought them on the ship?

No, not really...

[blkeagl.livejournal.com]

I was planning on being in the City overnight anyway visiting sibs.

I WAS entertained by learning that Grace Cathedral has a Peet's Coffee in their basement. That was worth the trip.