spanksregular

Maturity of members DOES come in to play. They may or may not be lacking, we shall see.

Eh, that quote is slightly taken out of context. One must also remember that in addition to George's darker material at the turn of the century, he was still always about being kind to your fellow man, and all this. I think a good quote from him, a RECENT one at that is, "Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist."

Sigh.. For the record, I'm black, or as you politically correct people would say "African-American". But it does not matter, it is just a word. Are you honestly offended if someone just says "gay" or "spic" or "######" or "####", not even thinking about the context which they are used in? Is this country seriously that Puritanical? How do people get so offended by things that most of the time don't even relate to them? To be honest, I can count on my left hand the amount of times I have truly been offended by something, and probably only one of them was actually legit. I have never encountered any sort of bigotry or anything else, life is pretty cushy. People spend too much time getting offended by things that aren't even worth the time of day.

Do I detect sarcasm? I'm sorry, the internet can make it very difficult to detect tone.

It's amazing, I've been reading this site for years. I happened to be home to witness the madness on here over the 2004 Crown and Boston shows (both of which were great), and then for BD the next year (another great show). Four years later, and people are still arguing about the same nonsense. I honestly don't get it, because it's the same people arguing. GMichael, MikeD, and a few others. Wow...

Is this narration fiasco still going on? What is so bad about narration? I've never understood what the problem is, to tell you the truth.

Wait, Phantom got ANOTHER new drill writer? How many different guys is that in the past decade?

No they weren't effects. It was more standard Bernstein than anything. He's been criticized for it, but whatever, he was ####en Bernstein. Though I do prefer other conductors to him usually.

Hey, I've been out of the loop since......last August pretty much. I think I heard at some point that DCI lost the deal with ESPN2, is this true? So what's going to happen about the broadcast? I thought DCI had a great thing going with ESPN, I loved last year's broadcast, great professional stuff going on.

2007 was definitely best showing by Crown's brass so far. That was an incredible show, especially to hear it live. So yeah, 2007 is what did it for me, past years were obvious improvements but didn't have that sense of refinement.

Of course they do, especially early in the season.

Censorship in this funny is very funny. The term "Japs" was not even used in a derogatory manner, it was a hyperbolic statement used to prove a point. Language is a complex animal, but I hope people know a hyperbole when they read one :-\. That being said, I have a question. Why is it that people say "the N word" instead of just saying "######". It doesn't make any sense. Everyone knows what "N" is the first letter of in this context, you implied quite well WHAT that "N" is supposed to represent, and we're all adults here, why the circumvention? Can people read "the N word" but as soon as you actually spell it out they start foaming at the mouth and beating the ground bones, grunting and spitting like the beginning of "2001"? As the late great George Carlin said about 15 years ago in response to political correctness in this country, "There is nothing wrong with words in and of themselves, it's the context. To some that may seem obvious, but it seems people must honestly still lack basic reading comprehension skills if the word "Jap" used in an a dry and academic context warrants a thread being closed.

I'm sure you've all heard some of Bernstein's recordings, his Bartok "Concerto for Orchestra" (I think it's with the New York Phil) has some kind of gross brass moments in it. "Characteristic sound" is relative. A lot of it comes down to personal preference.