Tekneek

And people, in all aspects of life, usually wait for all of the information before reacting, right? Sure, somebody always chimes in that we should wait for the whole story. Most of the time the whole story never comes out. Captain Obvious, I think we already know this. I'm not upset that you come along and tell me the sky looks blue. Don't get upset with me and I won't get upset with you. How's that?

I finally watched this one as well, for the first time. At least they only really had one on the field. I'm not sure I like it, but I can get over one. If they had a dozen of them spread across the field it might have been a bit annoying. The odd thing about the "circus wagons" with Star was that they only served as a curtain for costume/prop changes, as best as I could tell from watching the show. If they were that much trouble and had almost nothing to do with the show, the idea should have been tossed before they were even built.

Maybe you could answer this question. When an entire staff is happy, do you think they would normally all quit? It is quite reasonable to think there is something negative to this. An entire staff heading for the door usually indicates a problem in ANY type of organization. It doesn't necessarily reveal what the problem is, but this is not a sign that everything is going well.

I agree with that. I also agree with the comment about the backdrops. They were just one more thing taking away from the performance. If they had cut the vocals and cut the tables by 2/3 (not even saying they all had to go), the show would've sold a lot better. By comparison, that Suncoast '88 production looks minimalist. You really can have prop overkill and sometimes it takes away from the story instead of helping to tell the story.

And the stock usually gets hammered in the process. Nobody buys back in soon unless they name a new CEO that is so well known and successful that they feel he/she cannot lose. Absent of that, the stock price stays down until some results come in. In other words, Madison is getting battered around in the market right now just like any public corporation might.

I agree on Spirit, though I might even add 1990 on the Most: side since I really do love that one as well. For Crossmen, I'd add in 1995 on the Least: side.

For a corps that seemed so attached to tradition, this has got to be a major blow. It doesn't mean they will sink, but they appear to be taking on water. I hope they pull through it and are able to tap into that magical connection they always seemed to have with the fans.

I just watched it for the first time. It was definitely odd, but it reminded me what my problems with The Cadets' 2006 show really were. It was the amped vocals and the picnic tables. Suncoast could put on an art piece that was sufficiently "out there" without a truckload of pink tables and a bunch of microphones. I can appreciate art that is tastefully done.

What in the world are "very not nice things" anyway? That woman is a real kook.

I didn't pin anything on him other than having a response that didn't match up with the facts that I know about him. I would figure that Hopkins would surely know how this sort of thing works after all this time as a director of a drum and bugle corps. Hopkins wouldn't be trying to get into KK's business by referring this man to their Board of Directors. He would be looking at the evidence and drawing a logical conclusion based on what he knows about the drum corps business. Unless, of course, he somehow has never learned this about the drum and bugle corps business. We all knew what should be done. Are you saying we know more about how it works than Mr. Hopkins does? I never once criticized Hopkins for anything, in this incident, beyond appearing to not give a proper response based on the knowledge and experience that he has to have about how drum and bugle corps operate. Stop trying to read more into it than is really there. EDIT... I just wanted to add that this has nothing to do with anything other than this incident. I would be saying the same thing if this response had come from anybody that had been a director for more than two decades of a very successful drum corps. They should have the knowledge and experience to know, pretty much, how this all works and be able to point anyone in a very good direction with solid information regardless of which drum corps they are asking about. This boiled down to a problem with how an organization operates on the back end and had nothing to do with show design, concepts, or performances.

I thought YEA was saving Crossmen...? Who makes the staff decisions there and why are they trying to turn it into an experiment? I always thought the dynamics of drum corps were so different than marching band that you really needed experience around just to keep things on track. Even the best marching bands aren't working as hard everyday as a typical drum corps on tour is, IMO, and they certainly aren't riding buses every other day and sleeping on gym floors while they do it.

How long did it take you to write the email? If George Hopkins had been half as informative, which I suspect he wasn't, maybe this doesn't even happen. I just hope any corps director that gets contacted by anyone about a matter like this, regardless of which corps it is about, has sense enough to find the website for the corps (not hard to do with most corps if you just go to dci.org and find them from there) and provide them with all of the available contact information. If a director has time to put in blog entries during tour, they have time to make a few mouse clicks to help the whole activity save face (even with dealing with a know-nothing "journalist" who is an ########). At least it is clear that he asked Mr. Hopkins about the refund, but I wonder just what he did say to DCI. They should have at least easily provided all the contact information for KK by fax/email/whatever means necessary.

Better? That is debatable. We certainly tend to make things bigger and more expensive. That can be proven.

Credit to him for mentioning the board, although not very confidently.

Duh. I've made other posts in the thread. I obviously read the article. I understand the situation. Just because that is the ultimate issue does not mean we are not allowed to talk about other parts of the article, does it? Has it become board policy that the only discussion in this thread can be about KK not getting the refunds out? Let's make it official then.

The same goes for privately held "for-profit" corporations. They don't have to do more than pay their taxes when it comes to releasing financial data. Otherwise, they don't have to report to anyone.

The ignorance of the "reporter" is what made the Starbucks thing important. If he had any concept of what drum corps was about he would have immediately figured out the Starbucks thing was primarily for wi-fi at the price of a coffee. There is at least one other way you might be able to tell someone was at Starbucks. If you know what IP addresses/naming schemes are used for the Internet connections at their cafes, you can read the headers of email sent from there and may see it in there. I haven't seen the headers of any of those yet, but it is at least theoretically possible. Of course, I find it unlikely that this fellow knows about such things.

I thought it was pretty clear that Hopkins was contacted because Doug was currently working for him. I guess it wasn't that clear to anybody else.

I'm not making excuses for the reporter. I agree with everything that has been said about him. Unlike you, though, I think Hop had enough time to say this: "The proper, and only, contact to resolve this matter is the Board of Directors of the Kiwanis Kavaliers. You can find this information at : http://www.kavaliers.com/contact/. Drum corps are ran indepdently by their own non-profit corporations, in general, so their Board is fully responsible for refunding that money. If all else fails, they may want to contact an attorney to resolve the matter. While Doug was their director, he doesn't control their money at this point and isn't a legal contact in the matter." It didn't even take five minutes and would have been much more informative. And yes, I think he had plenty of time to do that. He wasted more time on blog entries during the tour than it would've taken to give a thoughtful, informative, and educational (very educational for this "reporter") reply. And, IMO, his response met the "lacking in seriousness" portion of the definition of flippant. I realize that is subjective and you may think his response revealed just how seriously he was taking it. I think a serious response would've led the man to not even call DCI. Of course, there is the chance that Hopkins manually typed in the contact information for both KK offices and the man just ignored it. So, to that end, perhaps Hopkins did everything right and this d###### reporter ignored it. It does seem plausible, at least. I will admit that.

When I read something in Hop's blog about Crossmen's staff having to adjust to the grueling summer tour, I figured they had a staff that wasn't even beginning to resemble a traditional drum corps staff and were pulling them from marching bands or elsewhere. Has any drum corps done well that had a staff full of drum corps neophytes? I haven't looked them up, I'm just basing it off something I read in one of his blog entries.

The entity itself is responsible for what it does. They are corporations, even if non-profit. This means there is a Board of Directors that should be making sure the corporation is ran properly, but the legal requirements for the makeup of the BoD is pretty loose in most states (I think). I don't believe there is any requirement that they be independent of the rest of the entity, although that would certainly be preferable (IMO) for all corporations (non-profit or otherwise). If any officer of the corporation is negligent or otherwise criminal, they may personally be responsible for some actions rather than the corporation shielding them. Otherwise, the corporation is the "person"/entity that is responsible.

Maybe you should read the article...because it sounds like you missed this quote... "I have spoken to Doug -- he appears to be handling this through his board. But then, this is what I hear." I certainly read the entire article. I even had made a post including the full text of the relevant portion of the article in another thread, when I did not know about the existence of this one. You should save your use of all caps for a time when it is really needed. Stuff the attitude, smart guy. Even if there were no quote from Hopkins, he surely should have been able to point the guy in the right direction. Hopkins surely knows the ins and outs of how all this works and shouldn't even really need to ask Doug how it works. I don't believe for one second that we know more about how drum corps are ran and organized than Mr. Hopkins does.

Hopkins could've pointed this guy in the right direction using his real knowledge of how drum corps works and the organizational structure. Instead, he gave a flippant response that helped nobody other than giving this "reporter" a chance to write something dumb in the paper. Hopkins is definitely not responsible for this guy thinking he has all the answers, while really having none, but the man has been in charge of a drum corps for 20+ years and should've easily been able to explain how it all works.

deleted... I'm too cranky this morning.

Based on reading Hop's blog, the quote sounds like his style of writing.