Jak

http://www.wgi.org/news_detail.php?id=1618

Men rarely make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Remember on SNL when Molly Shannon auditioned for the Rockettes at age 50? She wore tight red polyester pants pulled up to her armpits and had a straight-from-the-beauty-shop beehive hairdo. She also regularly announced that she was 50 years old. Anyone want to try that? I'm thinking maybe audition for Pride of Cincinatti?

Maybe the open bar and free catered food in the skybox was enough to get her there?

Marrietta (Cobb County Schools) definitely has a strong history in the activity. Pope, Kennesaw Mountain, Kell, and Lassiter: several WGI medals, and 3 World Class groups in that school system. Wow!

My sources (who were sitting by her) say she really liked Flanagan and Avon.

At the Atlanta Regional in February that year, Kennesaw just barely (by.1) acheived the minimum score to get into finals. I couldn't believe how far they came that season; I believe they grew 30 points from the first Regional to WGI. That staff knows how to work the last minute magic, though.

Oop, how do I delete a post?

One of my all time favorites.

Remember the Pocohantas year when the floor crew wore teal shirts to match the guard?

Kennesaw Mountain certainly pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the activity in 2006. Maybe it will happen again. It would be like deja-vu all over again...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet: (insert name of guard here)= Lemon Drop Feel free to fill in whatever guard you would like. I certainly won't name names...

Yes, I saw them in Nashville. I thought it was a shame that a few of them drove all the way up to Tennessee but forgot their pants.

I think you're absolutley right in the real world. But that doesn't hold true in a school setting. The Supreme Court has decided several times that First Amendment rights are limited in schools, and that teachers and administrators have the right to censor and disallow free speech or artistic expression if they believe it to be in the best interests of the students our if the speech or expression is counter to their educational goals.

And they may have had some that left; I don't know. But it's not educational to put students in that situation where they have to choose. What if you have a student that loves color guard and is really talented, but, for religious reasons, doesn't want to be in a show where she has to hang herself? She's just out of luck and can't participate? At least if it's an independent guard, the person can always go march somewhere else. But a HS student doesn't have that option.

Anyone have it on Betamax?

I guess we can all just agree to disagree. As a classroom teacher, I have a different perspective, though. If nothing else, I would never do something that might push the envelope just to protect my job. The administration would not take it lightly.

They won the Nashville Regional over Kennesaw Mountain that year, and then Kenessaw went on to win WGI while Mt. Juliet didn't even make finals. I love that music. Suprising fact: James Taylor is the vocalist...

Sorry, but I take serious issue with that. It's true that art can be controversial, and should push boundaries and even shock sometimes. But WGI is not MOMA, and we are not putting out works for adults who are serious about art to debate and ponder. We are dealing with students, and we have a responsibility to uphold certain standards. I'm an educator (not just color guard, but in the classroom), and I would never be so irresponsible as to expose my students to something so inappropriate, much less ask them to participate in it. In the same way, art teachers would be careful about what works they would show their students, lit teachers are careful about what books they study, etc. I'm happy to debate the merits of artistic works, no matter how shocking or vulgar, but asking students to take part is not acceptable.

I know that it's not their real ending. I don't know exactly what they have planned, though. And believe it or not, it's less go-go-go than it was before they re-staged everything.

I found the music on Itunes; it's by Pink Martini. Though the band must have something more than just a martini when revisiting this classic song! The polka-dot flags are great, and were done by the Warhol-esque Tommy Keenum.

We use scores as an educational tool. We almost never talk about competition, or who we want to beat, or whatever. We talk about the number constantly, though. "We had x last week and we want to strive for x this week." Or "We were 1 point under block last week, let's work for block this week." "We had a bad run in prelims, but our finals run was much better, and our score went up this much." We're constantaly talking about and working for that number. Unfortunately, we've had to stop talking about scores this year, at least until we understand the new system better. We approached it the same way early in the season, and when better performances led to lower numbers, we had some devastated kids. And there are no block numbers to strive for. Of course, we're having a bit of a down year, and wouldn't be getting block numbers anyway, but it's made it much harder this season.

The word is that they spent the past 3 weeks totally re-staging the show. There isn't one set that's the same as it was 3 weeks ago. Apparently, if the staging put you in a different spot, you also had to learn parts for a new piece of equipment. Yikes! I could tell the difference and thought it was much better. They also are cleaner and much less droppy than they were in Nashville. I'm also happy to report that the bird wings are gone, and they have new butterfly wings.

Interesting that their number has them ranked 5th. That has to be the lowest they've been ranked in 5 years. I would guess they aren't pushing quite as hard since they aren't going to WGI.

My group was in warm-up on Saturday when they evacuated due to a tornado warning. They evacuated all spectators from the performance gym, and both the guards from the warm-up gym. We spent about 30 minutes in the basement, then we went back and finished our warm-up. It was kind of bizzare.