I’m watching the Sugar Bowl with Micah. Well, I’m not really watching it; I’m Interneting while he watches the game. Now it is halftime, which normally results in a slew of TV commercials and football announcer fappery. But alas! For once the networks are showing some marching band footage! Micah and I met while marching and playing in the Oregon Marching Band and during our four years in band, were routinely given the shaft by many television networks when our fifteen minutes of fame at halftime came around. The concept of watching a marching band perform their halftime show on television is very exciting for both of us!

We start watching the first marching band: Louisana State University Marching Band. The football announcers tell us that they are the proud recipients of the Sudler Trophy which, unknown to us before tonight, is the “Heisman Trophy of Marching Band”. We hear this from the announcers and assume that these cats have some skills to show us. Oh how I wish this were the case.

For those of you who don’t know much about marching band, let me give you a small crash course. There are two styles of of marching band; corps (walking around on a football field and forming shapes) and parade (marching together in a block). There are also two marching styles; high step (lifting your legs up to knee height, UW goofiness, how can anyone play well with that much lower trunk movement?)) and roll step (highly-stylized, gliding with straight legs). All band members must march in step together; everyone moves their left and right feet together in tempo. With all marching styles, good posture is also essential for good embouchure (the proper muscle facial tension for playing a wind instrument) and also so you don’t look like a pained, unrehearsed, non-quality ensemble of asshattery.

The LSUMB was marching out of time; meaning some people were stepping with their right and others with their left. They were marching with lyres (devices for attaching sheet music to your instrument) or worse, holding their music in front of them. Which leads to their next problem: how can they play in time with each other if they are not watching the drum major (the conductor) who is conducting in time with the lead snare drum player’s feet? How can they possibly expect to have a successful ensemble if they can’t march or play in time together? I might have been able to give them credit if their music was any good. I would have liked to think that perhaps their director spent less time on drill writing and marching fundamentals and more time on arranging music. But I cannot, because sadly they were playing some ASCAP-licensed, canned-arranged music; nothing original. So if their marching sucks, their playing sucks, their music sucks, it begs the question: why even have a marching band at all if all it does is take money and produce shitty results?

Micah and I had the extreme fortune to be under the direction of Todd Zimbelman, a nationally renowned band director who settles for nothing but quality. Every year we learned and relearned fundamentals as a group, we marched difficult and challenging drill sets, all of the music was arranged in house, music was memorized by all players, we spent 20 hours a week rehearsing together and in sectionals. We were expected to start and cut-off each song played in the stands together. The expectations of quality were high and we were expected to meet them or leave. Being out of step was not acceptable. Bad, generic music was not given to us. We took our interest / obsession seriously and as a group we had great results. ‘Cause otherwise, why be there and why represent a university in a piss-poor quality fashion?

It saddens me that the football-watching folks never had the pleasure of watching more than 20 seconds at a time of the Oregon Marching Band when we were in the band, under the direction of Todd. We were a kick ass group of performers, some years better than others, but every year was always focused on quality of performance. I although the average football Joe probably wouldn’t appreciated the amount of time and effort that it takes to be quality anyhow. But maybe, just maybe, people might have more appreciation for marching bands and maybe more networks would televise them if more ensembles held themselves to a high standard of performance quality. Another marching band ProTip: when you place a piece of music inspired by a volcano, don’t form a mountain with “lava” coming out (we are now watching the Notre Dame Marching Band do just this, oy). Because that takes no creativity, it makes the audience feel dumb, and it just looks plain silly.

Presently, the football announcer is interviewing a tuba player from Notre Dame. So I guess some band coverage is better than none.

Oh well. Play on, cats. Just try something different than Louie, Louie once in awhile, okay?

To escape the forecasted 100+ degree temperatures in the valley this weekend, we went backpacking with llamas in the Drift Creek Wilderness, where the high temperatures were at a much more tolerable 80 degrees for the highs. There are several Drift Creek’s in Oregon, but this one is inland in the coast range near Newport and is famous for its old-growth forest. Pics from our previous trip in 2003 and now from 2006 are up in the photo gallery. Dylan and Numine also have photos up, hooray for hiking with other photo geeks!

Be it because of the excessive heat or something else, I have felt extremely lethargic and tired recently. Stagnant, tired, cranky, dispassionate, exhausted, those are all the words that come to mind. The Monday through Friday routine really takes a lot of energy out of me. Poor Micah; he sees me when I am exhausted at night and rushed, stressy, and hurried in the morning. Last week I met him for breakfast and he got to see the pre-work morning side of me, which is so much more energetic and chatty instead of a tired ball of human that collapses upon entry through the door and has few words to utter other than: “sure let’s make dinner” and “good night”. Susan and I will be running tonight and I am not looking forward to the run, which is unusual.

Meh, I can’t complain too much. Things are good and I am fortunate, all things considered. But wow, whatever happened to the seemingly endless energy that I had during my teenage years? I could really use some of that right now… or more time to nap.

Mid-summer has arrived, reminding Micah and I that we are slowly running out of weekends to put a new roof on our house. This is the one big major project we have to do this summer, as there is bare plywood on our roof and we don’t want any trouble this winter when the rain will come pouring down. We have a roofer contracted and our old roof will be getting torn down and a new brownish-red roof will go up sometime in August. Have you ever thought to yourself: “what color of shingle would I like on my roof?” Neither had we, but after some careful deliberation and color selection on java intarnet programs between black (too hot), silver grey (too light), dark gray (too common), green (f*** no), and brownish red (hrm… pretty?!) we finally selected our color. Because we are both so damn busy this summer, we have opted to not tear the roof off ourselves, but contract the extraction work to save our sanity. Pics of the deroofing and reshingling will, of course, be posted.

Speaking of projects, this blog template and the gallery template are in need of some serious revampintation. I lack the skills to do it myself and Micah is often too busy to make webspace beautification and improvements a priority. Several of you have mentioned to me that the comments verification is too difficult to read and deletes your thoughfuly written comments. I lack the skills, he lacks the time. I would tinker witih it myself, save for the fact that every time I attempt to futz with WordPress or Gallery on my own I end up breaking it and creating more work for Micah in the end. Who knew that one could delete an entire directory accidentally by simply experimenting with the border colors? Oh yes, it’s possible.