In Which There is Thunder in Boise

For all my band enthusiast friends. How often do you get to see photos of DCI corps on blue turf? Perhaps once a year, that’s how often.

Loved this guard.

Given that we were in Boise, and this corps was from Pennsylvania, the Texas flag was a tad unexpected.

Wish this wasn’t blurry. The capes were pretty amazing – it looked like the Hogwarts Drum & Bugle Corps there for a  few minutes.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Troopers’ field directors.

V is for Vanguard.

May we all be so lucky.

My Story, Part Three

A lot of people say that the years of high school are the best in their lives, but in my case high school had nothing on college. I started off majoring in political science, devoting seven hours a week to being an invisible member of the Blue Thunder Marching Band under the direction of David A. Wells. It was nice to have the opportunity to lay low and acclimate to the ensemble with minimal responsibility, particularly when that “minimal responsibility” included good friends and band trips to Los Angeles and Hawaii. My self-imposed anonymity was short-lived, however. Pep band season started, and one of the drum majors came up to a sax sectional with the message that David wanted to talk to the “red-headed kid from Meridian.” I reported to the band office and was asked if I could fill a vacancy in the pep band. He didn’t even have to get to the $20/game paycheck before I had eagerly accepted – and that, of course, was the beginning of the end. The following year – now an English major – I was picked as a co-section leader, and on the first day of band camp I was faced with the daunting task of exerting authority over a large group of more seasoned college students. One of the scariest people in my new section was a 22-year-old transfer student from Cal Poly who mentioned he’d been that school’s former assistant drum major. (It’s funny how young 22 sounds to me now, and how old it seemed when I was 19.) His name was Ryan (“my friends call me Boise”), he had a small blue-and-white enamel bar fastened to his neckstrap, and as the season progressed, he’d periodically show up to rehearsal wearing a small gold pin over his heart. I noticed, and asked him what it was. It turned out that Ryan was a member of a band fraternity called Kappa Kappa Psi, a co-ed organization devoted to service, recognition and development of leaders, and a familial bond among college band members. His explanation and stories – not to mention the obvious fondness he had for the organization – piqued my interest, but at first I didn’t give it a lot of thought. Three things changed that spring. First, Ryan and I ended up seated next to one another in the community concert band, where we were able to spend a lot of time quietly “talking shop.” Second, I got disgusted with the marching band’s student leadership and made the decision to run for President. And third, someone made the mistake of telling me that I wasn’t a real musician and was unworthy of being a section leader or band officer because I wasn’t a music major. I got mad. And the longer I thought about it, the longer I knew I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to give back to the bands that were such an enormous part of my life. I wanted to add a positive force to the political melee in my school’s music department. I wanted to create a more organized social network for people like me, people who loved band above all else. And I wanted to prove something to the haters and the doubters, wanted to prove that dedication to and leadership of the band weren’t the exlusive bailiwick of any one field of study. I talked to Ryan, I talked to two of my closest friends, I talked to Dave Wells, and the next thing I knew we were on a plane to the 2001 Kappa Kappa Psi/Tau Beta Sigma Western District Convention. To make a long story marginally shorter, we spent the convention meeting with active members and national leadership and came up with a plan for bringing a chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi National Honorary Band Fraternity to Boise State University. When we returned home, we spent the summer drawing up a draft constitution and throwing casual recruitment meetings. I became the marching band’s President, and I knew that if I had anything to do with it that things were about to change. Colonization (the term used to mean starting up a fraternity chapter) is a hard sell on a non-Greek campus. You have to convince people to join a group that doesn’t exist yet, with the promise that it will be a lot of work, will cost money, and will have periodic episodes of very foreign activity. In the end, though, we convinced twelve people to join us, and the chapter at Washington State came down to Boise and conducted our first induction ceremony. Without going into any detail, it was one of the most powerful and symbolic experiences of my life up to that point. There was my love of band, sure, but this confluence of like-minded people acknowledging one another’s passion felt almost like a spiritual force. Ryan, as the only person experienced in the organization, became the colony president, and I was elected vice president. It was my responsibility to develop an education program to teach the other members everything about the fraternity, while learning the information myself. Ordinarily, another active chapter would have steered the membership education process, but our nearest chapter was eight hours away. The things I experienced during my years as vice president would have an enormous effect on my eventual decision to become a teacher. We became prospective members of Kappa Kappa Psi, and official colonists, just in time to run the local high school marching competition. It was our first service project ever, and we were determined to make a big impression. Diagrams, charts, maps, handheld radios – and the end result was the most smoothly-operating, on-time festival the area had ever had. That marching competition, and the excellent work we did with it, became our first tradition. That was a year of lessons. We learned about sacrifice and pride when we found the stadium’s American flag wadded in a black garbage bag between games and took it upon ourselves to raise, lower, and properly store the flag every day for that entire year following 9/11. (In that same vein, some of us learned how to correctly fold a seven-foot-flag with only two people when the rest of the colony couldn’t make it.) We learned about fear of the unknown, and about courage, and about trusting those who had gone before us. We learned how much people despise change – even positive change – and how low some people will go to fight change when a group of band members took it upon themselves to try to sabotage our colony. We learned about the influence of others – abusive fathers, controlling girlfriends, jealous buddies – on our members. We had brutal fights, heartwarming connections, hilarious parties. Five colonists dropped out midyear. One of them went home for Christmas break, caught some unidentifiable virus, and died. We found out about it as we were waiting in line at the printer’s to pick up our petitioning document. Then, on April 5, 2002, standing in a ballroom in a Flagstaff hotel room in front of two hundred or so Brothers, I became a Brother of Kappa Kappa Psi and our little colony became the Iota Kappa chapter. I was always one of those people who swore I’d never “go Greek,” and I honestly can’t say that I’d enjoy the traditional sorority scene much. But I can tell you that there is nothing quite like the sensation of abruptly adding hundreds of people to your family, hundreds of people who may not share your genes but who all have the same love of music pumping through their veins. If you know what I’m talking about, then there’s no need to explain it, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how to make it sound any less corny. Words like “extraordinary” have been overused to the point of impotence, but extraordinary is what this was. “Extraordinary” describes the effect the little chapter had on its members and its bands, too. Retention – in the band program and the university – improved. We began recruiting more music majors and became more neatly integrated into the department as a whole. Our projects had a real impact on the community and the campus. The chapter helped people survive rough times in their life. It coaxed people out of their shells, ruts, and closets… brought hearts together… inspired people to fly. I felt like a mama duck, watching an egg become a duckling and that duckling become a swan. For the first time that I can remember, I felt overwhelming, heartbreaking pride of other people. Every time we inducted new members into the chapter, every time we sang the song or recited the creed, I knew that we were all in the presence of something bigger. The whole had exceeded – and was exceeding – the sum of its parts. Needless to say, I’d drunk the kool-aid. Ryan and I made a really good team, in the band and in the chapter, and seemed to share an unspoken language that no one else knew. It was, then, probably only natural that we’d end up engaged to be married. He proposed in May before my last year of college. That was a big summer; in July we traveled to Norfolk for National Convention, and I had the indescribable honor of giving the keynote address to the national assembly of Kappa Kappa Psi. Writing that speech required me to sit down and really consider what the fraternity meant to my Brothers and to me. I talked about what our responsibilities were as members of Kappa Kappa Psi – about our duty to help others, to sacrifice our own self-interest in the service of the things we loved, to support musical education, to keep a song in our hearts. Of great importance to me was the fact that not every Brother was a first-chair player, a music major, a section leader. I thought about the people we’d had in our bands who were lousy musicians, hopeless marchers, tone-deaf, inexperienced, but who had given everything they had to continue striving for improvement, to continue contributing to the process, to continue bringing joy to the ensembles. I thought about people who did the impossible: blind section leaders, one-armed trumpeters, deaf baritone players, immigrants whose love of the band trumped their lack of musical background. I thought about duty. I thought about agape. The thing is that Kappa Kappa Psi urges us to embrace and support music, but not everyone will do that through music. There are, let’s face it, few true musical geniuses in our world, and if the only way we could serve our bands was through mastery of concertos there would be no Kappa Kappa Psi (heck, there’d be no bands). We all have different gifts. Some Brothers can draw and paint. Some can program websites. Some are reliable long-distance drivers. Some are born motivators, and some are born salesmen. Some Brothers keep meticulous records, and some Brothers always have the perfect joke ready to reduce a meeting to giggles. Some Brothers can teach, some Brothers can lead, some Brothers can follow, and some Brothers give the best damn hugs you can imagine. Some Brothers are writers. We each can take those gifts, musical or not, and use them to serve our bands. By the time I graduated, in the spring of 2004, the chapter had blossomed into something robust and self-perpetuating. Ryan and I looked at the chapter and realized that for all the stress, trouble, and sacrifice it had brought, it had rendered great good. Peoples’ lives had been changed, and each new generation of Brothers was empowered to change the lives of those who would follow. The things we’d learned and the promises we made had only gained potency with the years – each induction ceremony still gave me chills, still brought tears to my eyes. Kappa Kappa Psi hadn’t been a passing fancy that I’d helped to impose upon my school: it was a living entity, a catalyst.  Ryan and I left the chapter feeling satisfied and content, got married, and began living happily ever after. As time passed, however, the organization didn’t pass from my consciousness. They talk about the “irrevocable bond” to which we’re commiting when we join Kappa Kappa Psi, but for the first time I truly felt that. With a little bit of perspective I was able to see that love for music, band, and fraternity didn’t stay the same but matured and evolved with us. At first we crave it, and then we immerse ourselves in it; finally we reach a place where we want to nourish and support it, want to give ourselves back to it in a way that will help others have the same experience we’ve enjoyed so much. For a while there I wasn’t sure how best to do that. I served in a few capacities as an alumni leader, but my interests lay closer to the welfare of the active and prospective membership. I tried working with my local chapter on a few projects, but didn’t want to interfere with their natural growth. I conducted research on the fraternal/sororal experience in bands, flew to Atlanta, and presented it to a fairly skeptical roomful of ethnomusicologists. I tried writing about my philosophy of Brotherhood and ended up with reams of unshareable drivel. I didn’t give it a lot of thought – I gave it years of thought. I took into account all of the reasons why and all of the reasons why not. I wrestled with fear and doubt (a fight which has yet to end) and I consulted those I trusted most. And finally, after the initiation of my chapter’s Eta class, I made the scariest announcement of my life.

My Story, Part Two

My first major breakthrough came early, during summer band before my sixth grade year. I’d spent several days sitting in the back row of an enormous crowd of wannabe musicians growing increasingly frustrated with the saxophone around my neck. The strap was biting into my muscle and blow as I might, I could barely elicit a sound from the mouthpiece. A cold knot of dread settled into my stomach as I contemplated telling my parents that I wasn’t going to want to play saxophone after all. Suddenly, the scary old high school band teacher whose band room had been commandeered knelt behind me. The rest of the room was busy squeaking and squawking their merry hearts out, and no one saw as he laid a hand on my shoulder. I jumped, certain that he was about to confirm my fears that I would never be in band. But instead: “Don’t blow so hard,” he told me. Those four words were electrifying. I cut my airflow and suddenly sounds – nice sounds – came out the other end of the stubborn horn. By the end of summer band, I was one of the better players and had even learned that more comfortable neck straps were available. And although it took me many years to realize it (and many more to implement it), I’d learned an important lesson about trying to force things. Some things can’t be done by force, and some things just have to be left alone to progress naturally. My middle school had three by-audition eighth grade performance groups: drama, choir, and jazz band. I had my eyes on that band as early as sixth grade, craved the day when I could audition to be a part of it. In fact,  the biggest reason (in my mind) that I didn’t take the school’s advice to skip seventh grade was that I wouldn’t be permitted to audition into Jazz Plus. In seventh grade I joined the beginning jazz band, and you can see evidence of my first improvised solo in the third photo to the left. It was a somewhat stilted jam on “Louie, Louie;” I can’t say I’m especially proud of that, but a girl has to start somewhere. It was a funny little jazz band – a baritone, a flute, two keyboards, a French horn – but it was something. Then in eighth grade I auditioned for and made Jazz Plus. That year’s pivotal solo was in “Norwegian Wood” at the middle school graduation, proving fairly conclusively that the director had an odd definition of jazz. It was a fantastic year, and I thought we were quite the hot ensemble. In retrospect, I guess we all see ourselves as pretty terrific, wherever we are at a given time. Little kids feel grown up, beginning musicians feel seasoned teenagers think they know it all. Times were changing in more than one way, though, and in the spring of eighth grade my family decided to move. That summer, we packed up our things and moved from Colorado Springs to Boise, and come fall I enrolled at Meridian High School. I was happy about the move, except for the fact that the high school I would have attended in Colorado was prepped for a marching trip to Disney World while this new school didn’t permit ninth graders to march. That year, one of the senior saxophone players came into the freshman concert band and took orders for rubber mouthpieces; a few weeks later, he returned with tiny rectangular boxes for the handful of us who took him up on it. Martin had always had a good sound, but I hadn’t realized what an impact a different mouthpiece could make. The following year I joined the Meridian Marching Unit, renowned at the time for its poor performance at local competitions. The previous year had been a low point; during one major competition they’d had to stop mid-song and start over. To this day, no one knows what caused the cosmic shift that propelled the Unit from that bad place into the trophy case my sophomore year. Maybe it was shame, maybe it was a different style of music – maybe it was just time. Whatever it was, it reduced tough senior boys to tears and sent shockwaves through the entire ensemble. To the day I die I’ll never forget standing in the bleachers as our name was called, snapping to attention as the drum majors collected their trophy, aware peripherally of my fellow musicians silently sobbing, statue-still. I became a band-adrenaline junkie, living for the moments – whether on stage or the field – when the music supercollided and became something tangible, almost visible, vibrating with power. It was easiest to find on a football field, when physical movement could amplify the music’s effect on my body, but I felt it in Holst and Holsinger, Williams and Reed. In eleventh grade I became section leader of an unruly pack of six-foot-tall boys and began the difficult task of sculpting my natural bossiness into effective leadership. I have those kids (three of whom were named Mike) to thank for any ability I have today to deal with people, because Holy Bovine did I screw up a lot. Staggering, embarrassing mistakes. (It’s strange to look backward and realize that I was only sixteen years old at the time, but it does make it easier to forgive myself for being so dumb.) I also became first alto in the jazz band, and if leading boys on the field was hard then jamming with them on the stage was nigh impossible. I don’t know how typical my experience was, but I found myself in the middle of a raging pit of testosterone and ego. To these guys, a woman’s place was as far from a jazz band as possible, and from day one I was fighting to prove myself to them. It wasn’t always an unpleasant experience, and the strength of the music made up for the bad times, but there were a lot of tears shed in those last two years of high school. It didn’t help that – whether through pressure or just adolescence – I’d lost the conidence to really let loose on a fastpaced improv. While they were channeling Charlie Parker, trying to outdo one another in the land speed records for jazz solo, I was only truly at ease with a nice dirty blues. I gave Martin a lot of credit for that; it seemed like that horn was built for the blues, and I was merely the tool that filled Martin with air so it could sing. Unfortunately, the blues were thin currency in my jazz band. My second major breakthrough came at the best of all possible times. I stood up into the microphone for my lengthy improv solo at the BSU Jazz Festival. The judges were all mumbling into their tape recorders, and I was paying attention to a dozen different things as I stood – the music stand, the microphone stand, my reed – but not my feet. And I stumbled. I caught myself, one foot shoved forward at an awkward angle, twisted in the microphone cord. The band played the lead-in, and there was nothing to be done but to start playing, crooked and ungainly, looking – I was sure – like a total idiot. Being off-balance, though, did something strange to me as I played. I was looser. I leaned into the microphone, rocked into the phrases, followed through on the runs as if I were trying to make a basket. It was the “click” moment, when a gear in your brain turns over and you suddenly understand something you’ve been studying, and an analogy for the greater lesson: sometimes everything has to go wrong in order for everything to go right. All things – even nearly doing a face-plant in the middle of a performance – happen for a reason. I’m a competitive person, and I thrived on being a part of a competitive band. When our drum majors called us to attention at rehearsal’s end and bellowed out the call-and-response, I took it as a spiritual experience. Feet are: TOGETHER! Stomach is: IN! Chest is: OUT! Shoulders are: BACK! Chin is: UP! Eyes are: WITH PRIDE! EYES ARE: WITH PRIDE! As a sophomore and junior in high school I watched performances by the Boise State marching band – a tremendously entertaining band that didn’t spend too much time cleaning individual technique – and felt disdain. I knew that it was a good band, but I couldn’t understand why they didn’t make the effort to be flawless. Then I went through my senior season, with all of the highs and lows of competition, and I began to see the marching band experience in a new light. Maybe I was just tired of the stress and pressure, but I’d developed a new philosophy of band. If it wasn’t fun – for the participants and the audience – what was the point? That year I saw the Boise State band with new eyes, and I began picturing myself in blue and orange. I did the typical college/university mating dance in the spring of my senior year and came up with a few tempting scholarship offers, but in the end two criteria made my final decision for me. I wanted to at least start out close to home, and I wanted a marching band. Only one school would do, and in the fall of 1999 I matriculated to Boise State University and joined the Keith Stein Blue Thunder Marching Band.

My Story, Part One

Even setting aside the judicious application of Pink Floyd albums to settle me down to sleep as an infant, music has been a central part of my life pretty much from the beginning. My earliest recollection of classical music is when we used to go to dress rehearsals and concerts for the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, under the direction of the charismatic and talented Christopher Wilkins. The music washed over me (and over my head) and I became enchanted with the up-and-down motion of the bows, the synchronized reach to turn the page, and particularly the dance of the tuxedo-clad maestro. I learned to relax the focus of my eyes until the stage melted into a golden glow of pulsating music, and I sat there, in a trance, imagining myself soaking it up like a thirsty plant.

(If I read that last sentence somewhere, I’d think that the author was over-dramatizing their childhood experience, but it’s the honest truth. I’m sure there were shows where I squirmed and fidgeted – my mom could verify that – but the moments I remember were the ones that reduced me to a state of paralysis. I remember believing for many years that I wanted to grow up to be an orchestra conductor, tails and all, with that euphoric sensation in my mind.)

When kids start going to school, they get exposed to all kinds of contagious germs and diseases. I was no exception, and before long I came home infected with the desire for piano lessons. Thea played piano, so I wanted to play piano. Just your basic five-year-old oneupsmanship. Fortunately, this fell in line with my parents’ plans, and soon I had an instructor and a turn-of-the-century upright that we bought for a few hundred dollars.

I was a typical kid. There were times when I had to be bribed, threatened, or otherwise forced to practice. But it paid off, and I progressed from “kid whose feet don’t reach the pedals” to “fledgling classically trained pianist.” Devoting massive amounts of mental real estate to the memorization of sonatinas didn’t end up winning me any blue ribbons, but it won me a bet or two. (You can make pretty good money off of playing nine-page compositions, blindfolded, in middle school.)

And then the second semester of fifth grade rolled around, bringing with it a day I’d been anticipating for two years: instrument “petting zoo” day.

This requires a chronological backtrack with no real milestones; forgive me.

I’ve tried, and failed, a hundred times to nail down my first band influence. (That’s different from a “bad influence,” but only very slightly.) The concept of band has always been floating around, thanks to my mom’s tenure as a drummer and ties to the University of Texas Longhorn Marching Band. One of our roadtrip casettes had a recording of “Texas Fight” on it, and I knew every trombone rip and trumpet flourish. I hadn’t been to a lot of parades – weather rarely cooperated in Colorado – but the sight of a band marching down a street always stirred my blood. There literally isn’t a point in my conscious when I said, “one day I think I’ll join band” – it was a given, like “one day I think I’ll be a woman.”

And so, when the middle school (or the high school, or the local music store – I honestly don’t know who it was) filled an empty classroom with cheap musical instruments and invited all interested fifth graders to give ‘em a whirl, I was the first person in line. I passed up the percussion instruments, spent some time discovering that I was utterly incapable of producing sound on the flute, shrugged at the long line of girls waiting for the clarinet, and tried valiantly to get a grip on the unwieldy French horn. Next up was the saxophone, nearly as long as I was tall, and I immediately perked up. This was the instrument my grammy liked, the instrument that weeped in the twilight down echoey streets in mountain tourist towns. This might do.

That spring, my family went garage sale-ing in Denver. Our last stop was inspired by an ad for photography development equipment, but while digging around in the driveway debris my mom mentioned that what we were really looking for was a saxophone.

“That’s funny,” said the homeowner. “I actually have one that I need to get rid of.”

 It had been her late husband’s, and since his death had hidden under a bed in a musty leather case. We unfastened the clasps and discovered a 1920’s-era Martin alto, pearl keys, velvet bed. It was love at first sight, and for all I know it cost more to get Martin in working order than it did to buy it, but I had found my beloved companion for the next chapter of my life.

Bodily Harm (Part Two)

I was in marching band for (thinking) eight years – three in high school, five in college – on top of fourteen-ish years of concert band, six years of jazz band, eight years of pep band, and a couple random little musical endeavors here and there. You know, your average “semester of oboe lessons when I meant to sign up for hobo lessons” – stuff like that.

But yeah. Eight years of marching band. And in those first seven years, I had my small share of injuries. By the time I hit my final year of marching band, however, my better-than-perfect hearing was still unscathed.

That’s the year that the director and assistant director decided to seat the sax section in the middle of the drumline while in the stands at football games.

It’s also the year I got a crippling case of costochondritis and ended up weeping with pain – after I’d “healed” – because of the physical soundwaves from the drums rattling my chest.

And it’s the year my ears got hurt. Since then, my right ear has had perceptively worse hearing than my left, and I’ve had much more trouble using a telephone. It has made me very angry. It seems to me very irresponsible to have anyone seated that close to a university-level drumline without hearing protection. Once you damage your hearing, you can never go back.

Fast forward to today, when my company started company-wide hearing tests. Our craft employees are exposed to very high levels of sound and are provided with hearing protection, which they are required to use. However, we know that some hearing damage is going to occur, so we monitor it annually. They set some time aside for admin folks who were out in the shops, and I took advantage of it. I was really dreading the results, so much so that I found myself a little shaky when I sat down in the testing booth. (That, and I stress out over the itty bitty beeps and the stupid buzzer. I feel like I’m on a sadistic game show.)

Three minuets later I had my results.

Zero is perfect hearing, I guess, and 25 is recordable hearing loss.

I’m so happy. Sure, my hearing isn’t as good as it once was – but it’s not bad. It’s very good. And yes, my right ear is worse off than the left, but it’s not majorly damaged. No hearing aids in my immediate future!

Although this just makes me all the more determined to buy a big old box of inexpensive earplugs and taking them to the band building.

Is it Friday yet?

I’m suffering from pervasive psychological inertia. Can’t make myself do anything I’m supposed to be doing. I think it’s a bad case of the Januaries, is what it is. That, and I want to be doing more fun projects, rather than paperwork and little tasks. I want to lead people, not shuffle memos. SOmetimes I get to do that at work, but not right now. It’s okay. I’ll get over it. In the meantime, I’m wasting massive amounts of time on Facebook, dredging up old memories and wondering how on earth I gained that much weight in that little time. Not that I wasn’t coming from a deficit! Ryan, too…

 

Those pictures are from only four years ago! Unretouched or stretched! Isn’t that awful? It almost hurts to look at those arms, if you ask me…

Missing old friends and good old times. There’s one entire roll of film (rendered digital, of course) of all of us st Old Chicago just busting up laughing. No plot, no action, just uncontrollable, tears-in-eyes laughter. I haven’t had that in a while. I guess we can’t stay 21 forever but I wish we’d done better at holding on to those incredible friendships.

Albums, for people interested in our chapter, KKPsi, my younger self, or random voyeurism: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6.

Engaged in some retail therapy over the weekend, of the Amazing Clearance variety. Got some good clothes for work (two skirts, four blouses, a vest, a jacket, pair of jeans, two pairs of slacks, three pairs of heavy stockings, two pairs of boots) for well under $200. Nothing over $10, except the boots. Penney’s and Dillards. Gotta love January sales, even if you don’t love January…  Was going to provide pics, but I ran out of batteries and then I ran out of good lighting.

I need a vacation, and by “vacation” I mean a semester of classes. Isn’t that awful? All you poor students out there dying to graduate while I’m sitting here, getting paid nicely to do a great job, and all I want to do is go back to school. Youth school is wasted on the young people who aren’t like me!

Did I mention that I went to hear Al Gore speak last night? Had great seats, too. Still processing… initial and noncontroversial comment is that he is an amazing speaker and it’s a fascinating, extremely well-done presentation. That, and satellite-dish sized jellyfish are NOT OKAY.

In closing: these new coffee-flavored Hershey Kisses are not very good.

Best Damn Band in the Land

Okay, so I wasn’t really rooting for Florida or Ohio State. Conflict of interest, you know how it is. I wanted Ohio to lose, to throw even more chaos into the BCS pool, but I dislike Florida intensely, so yeah. But it doesn’t matter who you were rooting for, this is still damned funny. Yea team Photoshop!

Meredith

From what I hear, my sister (and Brother) is the new Vice President of the Blue Thunder Marching Band, and her horn section (of which she is co-section leader) won Best Section – a feat my saxophones never accomplished. Also, her boyfriend Aaron doesn’t know what instrument he plays.

Hooray!