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The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Brunch-core

By Kayla Burchuk

This week Shivaun Watchhorn (Geography, San Diego, Ca.) and Kai Bosworth (Geography, Spearfish, S.D.) were gracious enough to invite The Mac Weekly into their home for brunch, an almost weekly ritual for the roommates in the sun-filled apartment the two share with Bosworth’s chinchilla and their extensive record collections. Lovers of both punk rock and board games, Bosworth and Watchhorn talk music, food and animals. The Mac Weekly: One of the first things I noticed when I walked in the house was that each of you has a massive record collection. How many records do each of you own?

Shivaun Watchhorn: I think I have about 1,000 records.

Kai Bosworth: I have less. I have a lot fewer 7-inches, but I would say somewhere between 700 and 800, maybe.

TMW: How did you get started collecting records?

KB: If you’re into punk and hardcore music a lot of the stuff is not released on CD or MP3 or anything, so if I wanted to hear bands, I had to buy records, I had to have a record player.

SW: I had a ton of CDs and stuff, but I started buying records and realized it was more of an investment. Records appreciate in value, as I recently sold eight records on eBay for $200. I’ve been recently trying to step up my game and buy more expensive records, so I think I’ve “gone off the deep-end” or whatever.

TMW: Do you guys have a pervasive genre, style or scene that dominates your record collection?

KB: Shivaun listens to more hardcore than I do.

SW: Kai likes pop punk and screamo [laughs]. I also like pop punk.

KB: I refuse to defend myself.

SW: I’m having a problem now in that I’ve realized that I want to step up my record-buying game and start buying expensive collector pieces. I like so much stuff it’s hard to narrow down what I like collecting first. … I have pieces from all over the place.

KB: I like anything that was produced in the 90’s, any genre. I like 90’s college rock and the sort of hardcore in the 90’s that Shivaun doesn’t listen to.

SW: All Dinosaur Jr.?

KB: All Dinosaur Jr. I like the Lemonheads record.

SW: I like the Lemonheads a lot, actually.

TMW: Do you guys have any records in your collections that are total non-sequitors that you would admit in print?

KB: You have some hip-hop records.

SW: I like rap, though.

KB: I have Raffee’s “Baby Beluga.”

SW: You have some Shell Silverstein records, too.

KB: I have Shell Silverstein reading “A Light in the Attic” and “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

SW: Kai is a child. . I don’t know how many oddball records I have. I have quite the Bruce Springsteen collection. I have nine Bruce Springsteen LPs. I have the five-LP box set and I have the three-tape version of the same box-set, which comes in the same box, but it’s tapes instead of LPs.

KB: And I don’t think people who meet us would probably guess that both of us really like Neil Young. Do you think people would guess that about us?

SW: I think everybody likes Neil Young.

TMW: Where do you buy records?

[in unison]: Extreme Noise Records.

SW: I volunteer at Extreme Noise so I buy a shit ton there. I usually go like once or twice a week and buy a bunch of records. I probably spend like $30 a week, which is kind of crazy.

KB: When I was in high school we came to Minneapolis and vacationed here every once-in-a-while because I had relatives, and I went to Extreme Noise and bought like $120 worth of records every time. At first I was like “Minnesota sucks, I hate this place” but then I discovered the Extreme Noise. . It was also shaping my modern urban experience because I had never been to big cities before, or records stores.

TMW: How would you assess Macalester’s music taste?

[Both crack up]

SW: uhhhh..

KB: I listen to the new Animal Collective record. I liked it.

SW: I don’t listen to that shit. I don’t like it. I have two friends who went to Macalester, they’re into hard core, we hang out. That’s it. People at Macalester. I don’t know, they’re just not into the same shit I’m into. I don’t care. It’s not like I came to Macalester and decided to find a raging punk world.

KB: I did! [laughs]. It’s like “Oh man, I’m going to Macalester. Hüsker Dü.” We listen to Hüsker Dü a lot too, I do. You don’t listen to Hüsker Dü a lot?

SW: We never listen to it together in the house.

KB: I feel like I listen to “Everything Falls Apart” every other day.

SW: I would listen to “Everything Falls Apart” every other day.

KB: I came to Macalester like “holy shit, there’s all this hard-core history here.” And then no one really cared.

TMW: Kai, you grew up in a small town in South Dakota, Spearfish. What was that like?

KB: It sucked; I didn’t like it at all. [Laughs] It was just super boring and we would have to invent things to do. and all of those things involved going out into the woods and shooting things or chopping up trees or building forts, and I didn’t like it. .I was talking about this with Shivaun earlier, and I think there is a higher ratio per-capita of punks to not-punks in western South Dakota simply because people will drive two hours to go to a show because they have nothing else to do and so everyone’s more invested, even if they don’t know the bands who are playing, you just show up because, I don’t know, you do.

TMW: Was being part of that punk scene formative for you growing up?

KB: Yeah, totally. It was the only thing that kept me from, I don’t know, going crazy because me and my friends formed a band and people would come out and listen to us even though we were really, really awful. …We’d have shows in garages and there would be 50 people there showing up to a garage show in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota. It felt like a lot more of a positive experience whereas everything else in South Dakota, I felt like it was very negative. When punks get together, shit, this is going to sounds really stupid, but, like everyone has solidarity in the shittiness of the situation and is willing to hang out and do something about it. Like it’s not just a scene, like a party. People are there to get to know each other, to support the music and the bands.

TMW: Shivaun, tell me about your growing up in San Diego. Were you part of a music scene?

SW: All of my good friends were friends from high school, who mere mostly hipsters, or whatever, but they’re homies. That’s mostly who I hung out with, but I volunteered at this venue and booked shows and stuff, not very often, but I did volunteer there. I spent all of my time there in high school. So I went to all of the shows that were there. So I’ve seen a million terrible bands and some good bands and wasted a lot of time sitting around doing nothing there. San Diego’s so backwards and weird. I don’t understand why any young person would choose to move there. Everybody’s a soccer mom or in the military or a bro. It’s just a weird place. I like going back; it’s fun to go there on vacation. I don’t know if I could ever live there again.

TMW: So you guys have a shared love of brunch? What is it about brunch, the liminal time frame?

SW: It’s not the liminal time frame because we have brunch at the time normal people have breakfast, which is, like, 8:30. We like to get up really early and make brunch, though today I slept in until 9:30 because I had this crazy dream that my sister was in Harry Potter. it was really crazy . Brunch is good . sometimes we go out to brunch.

KB: I think it’s just that all brunch foods are awesome. I think it is the liminal time frame because it’s at that time between breakfast and lunch I feel like I can combine the two and eat more and then snack throughout the afternoon.

TMW: What brunch foods do you guys like to make at home?

KB: I’m big into pancakes.

SW: I like to ply my trade with the tofu scramble and the potatoes. I really like to make fried breakfast potatoes, hash br
owns, french toast.

KB: One time we had a Mexican fiesta.

SW: That was really good.

KB: At Trader Joe’s there’s this seitan chorizo that’s extremely good.

SW: It’s only two bucks. Touching it is disgusting.

TMW: What is Settlers of Catan?

SW: The best board game of all time, invented by Klaus Toyberg, who is a board game genius. Settlers of Catan is a colonial game where you settle an island colony and mine all its resources and build cities.

KB: And it’s not like militaristic, it’s all economic, which is sort of interesting.

SW: It’s total resource beefing.

TMW: Is that problematic for you? Do you play Settlers of Catan self-reflexively, or do you get really into the colonial aggression?

SW: I can get into the colonial aggression of Settlers of Catan, but I played this game called Puerto Rico where you’re the colonial governor of Puerto Rico, and that one was actually, like, too offensive. Although I played it, and it was really fun, and I would play it again.

KB: And you also own it.

SW: I don’t own it. It belongs to Michael Harrigan ’12 . who’s my friend from San Diego’s little brother. So it’s his and he left it here.

TMW: Kai, How were you inspired to get a chinchilla, let alone in the sophomore dorms?

KB: My roommate at the time really wanted a pet and he wanted to get a hedgehog or something, and I had seen chinchillas on YouTube and knew that they took dust-baths and were extremely, extremely cute. So we went to the pet store, and the chinchilla wasn’t actually that expensive, so we got it. Addy was a lot smaller then and very cute. She lived in our dorm and when Kyle moved out he went to the French House and then to France, so Addy was stuck with me.

TMW: Shivaun, do you like sharing your apartment with the chinchilla?

SW: I do, although she does run on her wheel when I’m trying to sleep because she’s nocturnal or semi-nocturnal. So she gets really active at night and runs on the wheel, and the chinchilla cage is outside of my room. She’s really adorable, though . I like living with an animal I’m not allergic to.

KB: I really want chickens and a dog.

SW: Kai totally wants trendy urban chickens.

KB: Sassy urban chickens, David Bowie chickens.

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