Kings: Picture Perfect

I don’t take photos as much as I used to. There are several reasons for this, ranging from the patently absurd to the entirely understandable. I feel that there are only so many pictures of people hanging around doing nothing that I can post before I just start boring myself. As such, I try to save the camera for special occasions, like gala balls and road trips. These are the sorts of events that lend themselves to picture taking. Hanging out in the campus bar drinking until they turn the lights on is a little less special. I just don’t feel the need to document those nights any more than I already have.

Plus, you know, I can’t think of any more jokes to tell about them.

Still, though, my camera occasionally finds it way out of the house on nights like those, and pictures are taken. Most of the below were not taken by me. And, really, they are not very spectacular. However, over the course of reviewing these 80-some pictures, I was kind of taken by the level of sheer camaraderie that just steams through the screen. You can feel it, can’t you? The people in these pictures are friends. Like, really ridiculously good friends. And four years ago — for some of us less than that — we didn’t even know each other.

So, what the hell, one more digital roll of us: drinking, laughing, posing ridiculously, dressed up like bag ladies, being great pals.

The Highlights

• As said, most of these pictures were not taken by me. Kristine and Natalie — who lives in the apartment below us and may spell her name entirely differently from the way I have here — took my camera when I was busy talking to other people. Their first course of action was to take pictures of themselves in various states of emotion. Here’s Natalie being uncomfortable; here’s Kristine being sinister; and here’s Kristine being serious and Natalie being a deer. What range!
• They didn’t stop there! Here’s Kristine playfully resting her face on Natalie’s cheekbone. And here’s Natalie again, showing us that, almost a decade-and-a-half later, that scene from Home Alone is still funny.
• I, meanwhile, just looked really good. Seriously, I’m not one to brag about my personal appearance generally but damn, I had everything going for me that night. I should have hit on more people.
• This was actually St. Patrick’s Day. I probably don’t need to mention that, as clearly you can see people wearing green and looking absurdly drunk which are two of the three telltale signs of St. Patrick’s Day. The other being, of course, the ridicule and shunning of homosexuals.
• I actually don’t even know if that’s true, the homosexual thing. I just made it up because I like to court controversy. If you are feeling anger about that — or anything — right now, this picture of Angus should cheer you right up.
• Kristine, once again emoting: this time as a young child, who just got away with something really bad. Something that either shocked or bored Bryan.
• These are my favourite kinds of photos
• These are my least favourite kind of photos. As near as I can tell through all that blur, Kristine has been possessed by a demon. A demon who is trying to do that “here is the church; here is the steeple thing” with her hands. A demon who is trying and failing, while Rory looks on, bemused.
• Can someone help me figure out which way is up in this one? It kind of looks like she is being suspended from a bridge over a placid river, but that can’t be right. There’s no river in the bar. So maybe that blue thing is a gym mat? In either case, she seems both dry and with her equilibrium in this picture.
• I asked Kristine the emoter to write captions for some of the pictures in this set, as she had the camera most of the night and I know very few people in the pictures she took. Unfortunately, she neglected to write jokes for them, leaving me to the task. Let’s see what I can do:
  • This is Ben Stewart and a girl Kristine describes as ‘dubious’. I hope she never reads this site but, if she does, I hope she takes me on my word that dubious is just another synonym for ‘delightful’. Ben Stewart has both a doppleganger and a love for science. He is probably a better waver than you would think from looking at this picture.
  • This is Kate McKegan, who has been in pictures on this site before. I’d look for them and link to them but I’d much rather point out that you can see deep inside her mouth. With surprising clarity too. Also, Kristine pointed out that Kate is not actually part-mummy in this photo, but rather “she broke her collar bone at a ruby game in Truro–it is all better now, but it juts.” I can only assume that the ruby game in question was Bejeweled.
  • Kristine does not know who this is and neither do I. The same goes for this picture. And this one! But that’s okay because you’re probably not even reading this anymore since I just reintroduced you to Bejeweled.
  • This is Tim Butters who was apparently recently featured on the front page of the King’s Website. I wish I could be featured on the front page of the University website. Maybe if I, too, had a hat.
  • Lastly, we have this picture, of which Kristine had very little to say. I’m not sure why, though. It’s not often you see such lackadaisical boogeying down. It’s a kind of phenomenon.
• Some of these just caption themselves, don’t they? Like: “Kristine teaches Rory to feel the groove” and “Sweater Cops.” Some, however, are more difficult.
• Rory just insulted Mark’s manhood.
• But soon all is forgiven!
• In the end, it was Rock Superstar Peter Gorman who once again encapsulated the spirit of the night. Standing at a bar, wearing an awesome green T-shirt, he sort of half-shrugs, and looks not unhappy to be there.
• There’s some more photos included, too, that go beyond the whole bar scene. Mike and Danielle’s domestic life is captured quite extensively. You might assume from these pictures that they spend all of their time preparing and consuming food in our kitchen, but that’s only because there are no pictures of them in the living room, watching TV.
• Some of the pictures here are utterly bizarre. Others just seem entirely unnecessary. But, really, what makes this set is this picture, of Kristine dressed a bit like a bag lady and a bit like a gypsy, pretending — and convincingly so — that there is an alien bursting from her chest. This is followed up by a series of photos, each conveying a certain emotion. There’s regret, reluctance and humiliation..
• The rest of the pictures are of Mike, in various stages of de-bearding. I recommend you skip them and just view the awesome animation I posted below!
• A gem at the end: I have a yo-yo. Look at that trick. I call it the up-and-down. I rarely pull it off incorrectly.

The whole series can be accessed by starting here.

Enjoy them!

Matt