Here's A Shocker: I Actually Write About My Life

Yes, yes, I know. I hear your amazed gasps. Even through the...no, wait, I did this joke before. The long and short of it is, I've decided to actually write about what happened in the interim between my last posting and this one. Stunning, I know, but I have to start somewhere. And now seemed like a halfway decent time.

This Saturday was time for the Bands Of America competition, or BOA as it was referred to by anyone who didn't want to say the whole name. Which strikes me as being extremely lazy, if you think about it. I mean, they're saving, what, a whole second and maybe a third of a breath of air by shortening it in that fasion. Come on. Is it that much trouble to just say "Bands Of America," especially to a person who doesn't know what you're talking about when you say "BOA"? People do this sort of thing all the time. They take shortcuts and just end up making themselves unintelligible. And another thing, when people say "ATM machine" or "PIN number," not realizing that they're actually saying "Automated Teller Machine Machine" and "Personal Identification Number Number," nor would they care if they found out, and you just know these are the same people who use that infernally grammatically incorrect phrase "I could care less," which means exactly the opposite of what they're intending it to mean, but for some reason has entered the common vernacular, which makes about as much sense as everyone deciding one day that "yes" means "no," AND ANOTHER THING, I

*SLAP*

Er. Right. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, BOA. (See, once it's been explained, you can abbreviate, but not before, and saying "You know, BOA?" three or four times won't help me understand any better, and why can't these people just *SLAP*) Sorry. Won't happen again. So, BOA was quite entertaining, even the bus rides to and fro. On the roughly three-hour bus ride over, the staff put the movie Spaceballs on the televisions. I love Spaceballs. It's spot-on in so many different places, yet it manages to pull it off seeming like a light-hearted comedy rather than a heavy-handed parody. That, and Rick Moranis for Dark Helmet was a stroke of pure...freaking...genius.

Once we actually got there, we practiced up and down on the marching field that had kindly been set up for us inside the stadium. The main problem at this point was that the stadium was not primarily a football stadium, it was primarily a baseball stadium. Which meant that a large majority of the field, instead of being Astro-Turf like we were at least sort of used to, was packed earth. (On a side note, I really don't know how they got the painted yard lines to stay on the dirt. You'd think they'd have been obliterated after one or two people walked across, but somehow they survived. Huh.) If you don't see the inherent conflict here, you've never been in a marching band. Unfamiliar terrain under the feet, especially terrain that switches very quickly while you're not expecting it, can cause severe problems. The inside joke is that the "Turf Monster" reaches up and trips you. Not wishing that to happen, our director had us practice for a while, and I believe we made it through with only a few critical injuries.

War stories aside, we went back, had lunch (Chik-Fil-A catering, whoo), watched the other bands march up and down. These were only high-school bands, but they were some of the best in the country coming from all over the nation. They were seriously good performers. I began to worry that we might be outclassed, and expressed my fears to a bandmate beside me. "That's not true at all," he remarked. "It's not that we might be outclassed. We very definitely are outclassed. Did you wonder why we're not doing a full show?"

Disheartening news. And yes, I had wondered why we were only doing our pre-game show, then arranging into concert arcs to play some of our previous shows. Well, there it was, I guess. Our shows have to be somewhat simple in order for us to be able to learn them in a week. I mean, they're not that easy, but you can't learn a multi-stage complex show with props and all that every week. These bands had one show for the entire year, and a rigorous schedule to maintain it. I'd say we were beaten, but we were there because:

A. We were invited,
B. Having a college band around made the high-school bands feel more important, even if many of them were better than us, and
C. It was fun.

It really was. Some of these bands, they were amazing. I mean, really. Dang. I only wish we had time to watch more, as all too soon it was time to pack up and head back to the buses, so we could change and get ready to perform ourselves. We did so, to great fanfare, and we actually pulled it off quite nicely. Our fearless leader, Stanley, declared "Play until your lungs pop out. Balls to the wall, boys and girls." With such a directive, we could only play our absolute hardest. When we finished the final song, my throat was aching, my lips were throbbing, my tongue was sore and exhausted, and I was so dizzy and light-headed from hyperventilating that I was barely able to shuffle off the field. But it was worth it.

A particularly memorable exchange arises. One of the trombone players angrily turned to me and demanded "Who was blasting [playing loudly and without finesse] back there?!" I coolly replied "Everyone." His expression was priceless.

On the ride back, we got to watch Girl Next Door, a fairly raunchy movie whose plot I will not synopsize here, but it was vastly entertaining to an audience of our caliber. One of our section leaders, Chad, for some reason is known as "pure" and unspoiled. So whenever a questionable scene presented itself on the television screens, we shouted for him to avert his eyes, so his purity would not be compromised. Great fun.

Sunday, I watched...argh, what was the name...some dang chick-flick movie with my girlfriend. Pretty standard fare, as far as those sorts of movies go. An overbearing mother tries to manipulate the love life of her daughters, her daughters recoil and lash out, hijinks ensue, valuable lessons are learned about trust and all that sort of thing, hug, roll credits. It was decent, as far as my opinion of chick-flicks stretch, but it was for her and not for me. Next movie we rent, though, will have explosions, giant robots, or kung-fu fighting.

Or all three.

We also went out to lunch, a nice thing to do, but a practice that is rapidly worrying me. My bank account is draining. Why are all these restaurants so expensive? I don't recall ordering sirloin of Bigfoot grilled over moon rocks or whatever justified these prices. Isn't this supposed to be a college town, with poor college kids? Shouldn't there be prices according to what the market will bear?

A horrible thought occurs to me. Perhaps this is what the market will bear, at least for now, and that will change soon...and I'm doomed to ever-higher prices as the restaurants jerk me around like a puppet on strings. I'll have to dole out more and more cash to get even the simplest fare, until I'll have to sell my blood just to get an appetizer and a slice of lemon in my water glass.

...Perhaps you think I'm being melodramatic. You're probably right. Perhaps you think I'm acting like an idiot. Sadly, you're probably right again. But, eh, my online journal, my ramblings. You knew what you were signing up for when you read the title.

Tonight my girlfriend and I went to see the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Arun Gandhi, give a speech in the student union. I was glad to see that he still carries with him his grandfather's lessons of nonviolence, tolerance, and acceptance, and that modern politics do not seem to have entered into his message. We could really use more of that sort of thing these days, you know?

So, besides an uneventful lecture in History of Journalism and my missing of Introduction to Weather for the nth time (don't worry, he teaches straight from the notes and they're all online), that's it.

REPLIES.

Jake: All in all, I'd rather not contemplate you in the shower. Of course, now that you mention it, I'll never be able to chisel it from my mind. It's like trying not to think of pink elephants. And, er, if I had to compare you to any animal, a jackal wouldn't be it. I'd say more...a gerbil. Kind of interesting to keep around, but completely useless in any given situation.

I kid, I kid.

Steven: Well, your foolish claims of "manliness" notwithstanding, I have acquiesced and given up an entire post dedicated to things I've actually done. How about that, eh? Like them apples? And I still can't wait for Brawl. A school of thought suggests that it was delayed because they just got last-minute permission from some third-party to add a feature, and they need time to implement it. Do I hear Megaman?

Vic: That is, of course, your point of view. And my point of view is that I prefer the twenty-six rude letters of our alphabet, as opposed to the infinitely graceful and meaningful squiggles of another. Thanks. <3

Mom: Well, WoW isn't for everyone. I appreciate you trying to take an interest in it, though. And I'll surely set up a game of Toon when I come home this weekend, as I said. You're welcome to join in.

Peace.