preview show

the G-band had our preview show tonight and the event was not without incident. we had an entire day of in-service which consisted of a woman who is a retired coach/teacher/administrator, who works for something called the flippen group talking to us for six fucking hours. this is not an exaggeration. the title of the session was called "building champions" or some bullshit like that. she seemed very proud of her accomplishments and anecdotes. she used the words "I" an "I'm" 104 times in a 20 minute span during one of her sermons. the best part was when they compared the methods of a famous horse whisperer to those which we should use to establish relationships with at risk students. i can only imaging the reaction to this outside of the south.

after we were liberated from the days barrage i went to go check the stadium only to find that the field had not be lined. i know that mike had made arrangements to use the stadium before his surgery but do not know the exact details of the communiques between mike and the district administration and therefore unsure if a request to line the field was actually made. (i suppose here would be a good time to say that mike had a bypass last week and will be out for a few more weeks leaving jason and i running the asylum) being the flexible folks that we are we moved the show to our practice field behind the stadium. doing the performance on this field was not a big deal in itself, however it was published in the local rag that we were to be performing in the stadium so now we look like jackasses.

along with the show the boosters were doing a hamburger dinner as a fund raiser. (however it is unclear to the band staff what they are raising money for since the stock response when we ask for something is "can't the school pay for that". it is not that we are short on funds from the school but doing a purchase order for $100 worth of random nuts, bolts and other such things from the local hardware store seems a bit ridiculous. also, the district really wants us to stop spending so that they can finish up their books before the fiscal year ends at the end of the month ((which to me is a reasonable request)). the grill which the school district provided (so the boosters could make money=irony) did not work so we had to scramble to round up smaller gas grills for the event.

if anyone is still reading this i will now discuss the subject of the post: the preview show. the previously mentioned practice field was re-seeded last spring and a sprinkler system installed over the summer. it is great to have these upgrades but because of them we have not yet been allowed to use that field (nor has the football team to be fair). our only other practice field is a parking lot so we boldly made our debut without actually marching on grass yet this season (however unlike the previous issues we know this one was coming). i need to mention that grass fields in TX are usually kept quite short. the grass on this field reminded me of ohio turf. our natural turf in TX makes the ohio stuff look like fescue on a golf course.

despite all the the madness, the show was acceptable. it as been a strange post camp experience because everyone is used to starting school much earlier. normally we would be in our second week by now. we are really looking forward to school starting next week so that athletic two-a-days will be over and we can start a reasonable rehearsal schedule.