Senagod

As everybody else has mentioned, Alter Ego is killing it in that ad. The ad and the medication is really geared to the junior corps age, the younger the better. Gardasil is a vaccine to help prevent HPV, a virus that can be a cause of cervical cancer. Since HPV can be transmitted sexually, the push has been to get girls vaccinated before they have any exposure to HPV. I just checked the website and they say the vaccine is for girls ages 9-26.

For the record, my sister was 4 years old when I started college. We only did this for my junior and senior years of high school so that we could get more money in the initial aid package and I would actually have cash on hand to buy books and supplies for college. And a neighbor that worked in the financial aid office at a college told us about that particular strategy. Even with the financial aid we got, my parents had to take a second loan out on the house to pay for it, and I owed $20,000 in student loans once I graduated. It was a happy day in our house when we were finally poor enough to qualify for a Pell Grant my senior year in college. Another good strategy to avoid going to people like CampusLoan and Astrive...if your parents are divorced, you can sue the non-custodial parent for continued child support as long as you're going to college. If your parents don't live in the same state, make sure the laws are the same in both states. We were going to do this until we found out that the state my dad lived in doesn't allow for continued child support. And once again, don't work too many jobs while you're in school or they will lower your aid, and they'll try to take away the grants first.

Lance, I totally agree with you. Students, get to know the people in your financial aid office. If you and your parents are pests, you might get more money or not lose your money. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I worked 2 almost full-time jobs. My college promptly lowered my financial aid because I made more money. My mom called them up and informed them that while my income may have gone up, theirs went down and they were just hoping that no major appliance broke during the year. The school reinstated my aid package. Hide your money (we hid mine for a while in my sister's savings account). Look into living off-campus. Since schools issue the same amount of aid whether you live on or off-campus and base the amount on living on-campus, you'll generally save money by living off-campus. If you're not in college yet, look into the schools that are getting rid of loans for families below a certain income. At some of the Ivy League schools, you can get a free ride if your family makes less than $60,000 a year. Where were these programs when I was in school? There's aid available these days at some schools for families making over $100,000 a year (although why people making that much money need aid I'll never know.) One thing I'm curious about is why these student loan providers have sprung up all of a sudden. They certainly weren't around in the 90s when I was in college.

You would be surprised at what people are willing to throw away. When I was a security aide in college, we would go through the trash rooms on each floor and find lots of stuff in still good condition. Heck, some of the stuff was brand new! I know of people that would furnish their apartment or get new wardrobes from what people threw away when cleaning out their dorm rooms.

The Reading Buccaneers never sleep in hotel rooms.

I listen mainly to punk, alternative, indie, new wave, and old-school rap. Some bands...Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, Interpol, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, The Clash, The Cure, Hot Hot Heat, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Sonic Youth, Rancid, Eric B & Rakim, MC Lyte, Sisters of Mercy, Steely Dan, Throwing Muses, Hole, Nirvana, Bad Religion, Ben Folds Five, and more.

I knew what DCI was when I was of age to do it, thanks to a band director who would bring in old videos. We even had a DCI club at school where we would hang out in the band room and watch videos. Why didn't I march? It basically comes down to money and zero family support. There is absolutely no way my mother would've stood for me marching a summer and not working to pay for college expenses. I had no knowledge of Jersey Surf, which would've been a more viable option, but there was the matter of getting there (a 4-hour drive from the mountains of north-central PA) and not being allowed to take a family vehicle that far away for my mom's fear of it breaking down. And the money I would lose from not working weekends would've been hard to make up. Plus, I played clarinet in high school, but I did have a little guard experience, so guard is what I would've done. Do I wish I could've done DCI? Absolutely. But that's the way it was. My family was working-class for our area, but in the big picture we were poor. My mom was a waitress and my step-dad fixed heaters and air conditioners. My dad was not in the picture. It was a miracle that we were able to pull off my going to college at Syracuse, which we did thanks to a boatload of financial aid. It basically boiled down to drum corps or college, and overall I'm glad I have my college degree.

And that may also be true. We can talk about the acting, production value, etc. Yes, it can be annoying when people ask if drum corps is like the movie, but it's probably the same level of annoyance as when you tell people you're in drum corps and they ask if it's like their high school marching band. To the masses, it's all the same thing. I'm sure that before the movie and even after the movie, the average person probably has no clue about what a HBMC band is and what makes them different from other bands in terms of style. Going somewhat off topic, how many people here get the Fox Reality Channel? Basically it's nothing but reruns or original reality shows. I saw a bit of a show they did about recruits trying to become deputy sheriffs in Los Angeles and I got to thinking about how a show about drum corps just may work with that format. The whole emphasis on coming together as a team is what struck me as being similar to drum corps. It shouldn't be hard to get on the channel. They'll show anything. I mean, I saw promos for The Biggest Loser: Australia.

Thank you. That is exactly what I meant.

I think this movie gets a bad rap. I feel I need to remind everybody that this movie is not about drum corps, and it's not about what I'd imagine the majority of people on DCP have experienced. Drumline is about historically black college marching bands. They have a style all their own. That style may not be your cup of tea, but it is a style. The only people that have grounds to criticize the drumming in the movie are people who have marched in historically black college bands and would know if the drumming in that movie was correct to the style that those bands use. It's like a white frat guy or sorority girl complaining about the movie School Daze. Spike Lee didn't make that movie about white folks. He made it about historically black fraternities and sororities. It wasn't about my life, but I still enjoyed the film. I liked Drumline for what it was, a movie about historically black college marching bands and their way of doing things. Don't put other expectations on the movie, because it won't fulfill them.

I think BOA would have a better shot at it than USSBA would simply because BOA's setup of regionals and a championship is already similar to WGI. If USSBA were to enter the indoor scene with the setup that they use for marching band (local shows, state championships, region championships and a national championship), I don't think they would be successful in their home base of the Mid-Atlantic states. Just in those states alone you have TIA, MAIN, KIDA, Cavalcade, MAC, TRWEA, AIA, Mid-York and North East circuits. A fair number of units here are competing in 2 circuits plus WGI. Plus you have to look at the other areas of the indoor activity. Percussion is growing, and schools like to have their guard and their percussion attending the same shows when possible.

I don't see much evidence that they kill regionals in developing areas. Take a look at the sign-ups for the regionals and see which regionals are hurting for units to attend and which ones have waiting lists. Here's what I don't understand, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. A regular regional has a limit of 45 units and a Power Regional has a limit of 90, right? Then why am I seeing Power Regional registrations being closed once they reach 70 or so units?

Well, keep in mind that it's been 17 years since I was in high school and only had to pay $35 for shoes. My alma mater doesn't compete anymore, so I'm sure it's still only $35. For what you're getting for the money (being fed 3 meals a day during band camp, the staff, doing a concert festival), I can see why $500 is a relative bargain. The reasons why I have more of a problem with fees for marching band than paying for drum corps are first, my property taxes are going to the high school, so turning around and asking students to pay to play is almost like double-dipping, especially if band is a class that you get a grade for. If bands have to charge a fee because they're not getting any money from the school district, then pressure needs to be put on the district as to why they can't provide funds for the band. Secondly, to me, high school is where all students should have the opportunity to have as many experiences as possible. Band helped give me a love for music and showed me that there was a big world outside of my dinky small town in north-central PA, and that if I wanted that life, I needed to behave and work for it. I can't see why, when we want students to find anything that keeps them in school and graduate, we throw up roadblocks to the students that sometimes need that experience the most in the way of fees. I look at drum corps as "OK, you're serious about music and performing, and you want the next level." And that requires money, so as much as I would have loved to march junior corps, I understand the fees and I understood that I wasn't going to be able to have that next level. Them's the breaks.

All I paid for marching band was $35 for the cost of shoes. We took school buses for competitions, except for ACC's when we took a charter bus. We took a trip once every four years, and the trips were not any place major. Virginia Beach was our trip. Band camp was either at the high school stadium or the back field of the elementary school, and you brought your own food. Same for competitions. Nobody fed us at shows. You either brought your own food or you ate at the show with your own money. The band boosters ran a concession stand at the football games, which was the main money-maker. We sold hoagies all year long and boxes of oranges in the winter. Hearing about marching band fees always makes me sad. I got so much out of band and if there was a fee to march (anything over $50), my mother would have thrown a huge fit and I would not have been able to march. That's why I never marched junior corps. There's no way my mom would stand for paying for me to be away all summer and not working and making money. She wouldn't fork over $250 for a week of summer music camp until I saved up money for half the cost. You folks are very lucky.

I'm incredibly happy that I have two DCI shows pretty much in my backyard. The West Chester show is 10 minutes away and the Coatesville show is about 15 to 20 minutes away. Add in Allentown just over an hour away and I'll be seeing more DCI this summer than I have in the past 3 summers. Yes! Now, if I can only get my husband to attend one of these shows with me...

I think I spent less than $1000 for each of the years I marched at Reading. Granted, keep in mind that I live less than an hour away from Reading, so camp weekends I could go home at night. I could never eat a lot during the weekends, so I would eat just enough to keep going and then eat after the show. I only drank at finals, and I only ever got a hotel room twice. And sleeping on a gym floor really cuts down on costs! I pride myself on being frugal. If I spent the kind of money that some other folks spend on this activity, I think I would be divorced! No way my husband would stand for that.

This is fantastic news!

I say go for it! I marched Bucs in 2000 with only 2 seasons of indoor experience. I had never spun outdoors before. It never hurts to try. No matter what level you're at or can be, there will be a corps that will welcome you with open arms. As for advice on what to do to prepare yourself...start stretching. Determine whether your body can handle the demand that's going to be placed on it. Nothing sucks quite like starting a season, learning a show, and then having to quit because you blew out your knee or your shoulder or your wrist. If you can get your hands on a 6ft pole to spin when you have the time, that's great. But really, the most important thing to have is a great attitude and a willingness to learn and work hard. If you show up and work and take constructive criticism with a smile, you'll be fine. Natural talent, while a great thing to have, is not a requirement. I marched three seasons with next to no natural talent in me! Good luck!

Love your roommate's sense of humor! My husband doesn't know much of anything about this activity. Cadets used to be the only corps he liked because they did the World War II show. He said that he understood what Cadets were trying to do with the concept of the show, but that the content of the narration was "namby-pamby" and "weak." But score one for the members...my husband couldn't believe that the narrators were saying their lines live. He swore that they had to be pre-recorded because "nobody sounds out of breath."

Color Guard - Bushwackers Percussion - Bucs Brass - tie between Empire and Bucs Overall Effect - Bucs DM - David Bruni - Empire Statesmen Honor Guard - Hurricanes Showmanship - I'd end up getting her name wrong, but she was the soloist for the Brigs Visual - Bucs For Class A I believe Sun won them all except for Guard and DM. The Govenaires won those.

And how many times have you said that before? :P

Looks like the khakis and polos for the Marine D&BC are like a pre and post-performance uniform. They were in full uniform when they performed.

This is an interesting topic, considering I've read some studies that show that the music (whatever style it is) that you listen to when you're in your early 20s is the music you end up going back to and listening for the rest of your life. I wonder if the same connection could be made with drum corps fans.

Bucs have stayed at high schools since 2000, I believe. I know all of the years I marched we stayed at a high school for championships.

I thought his comment was funny as all get out, and a good number of people at my theater laughed when he said it.