COSMOS Day 12 - MZ passed at 15

Montomgery Zzyzx (MZ), a composer, student, skier, web designer and bad pilot, was killed last Thursday while participating in the game "Assassin" for COSMOS at the University of California at Irvine. He was 15.

MZ was a poor composer who wrote dull music and was ignored by most of his peers. He knew that no one would like his music, which is why this lesser quality does not diminish the way he lived.

While he was a failure as a musician, he managed to be a student of good standing at Hercules Middle High School. He was taking AP Calculus AB and AP World History, yet his ranking dropped down to number 15 by the end of the year.

"Girls can do that to [a student]," commented John Brown, MZ's journalism teacher at UCHMHS.

In general, MZ was deemed an acceptable person to participate in the COSMOS summer school program for mathematics and Science at UC Irvine. While at the program MZ attempted to rebuild his reputation as a musician.

COSMOS has several courses available to students called "clusters," and MZ was part of Cluster 6, Mathematics and Music. This course focused on music composition and the mathematical and scientific explanations behind the human perception of music, and is taught by Professor John C of UC Irvine and Professor Jim S of Long Beach Community College.

During the Fourth of July weekend prior to his death, MZ had just managed to reestablish his reputation as a composer. He was obligated to perform one of his more creative pieces titled “The 42 Suite, III. Florence” at the Composers Today Symposium, part of the Music Teachers’ Association of California annual convention hosted in Santa Clara.

Along with eight other young composers, MZ showed off his piece. The other musicians had written a piece for piano, and in general

“Lam [MZ] may or may not be missed after his death,” commented Dr. E. Vellame. “I wanted him to grow old and act like a grandpa who teaches biology.”

"From dust his music came from and to dust it will return," commented an anonymous critic on his music.