PC

Except for the equipment warm-up (color guard) facilities, the UD Arena is a pretty simple and marvelously easy to use venue for everybody, especially spectators. Plenty of other venues have been confusing mazes and logistical fiascos. Beyond equipment warm-up, my only other criticism is that the shallow angle of the slope of the seating areas, especially further back, makes it harder for some of us shorter folks to see over or around the spectators in front of us. Other than those drawbacks the place is great and dripping with wonderful history. And these days, with WGI playing a much reduced role in lining up rehearsal facilities, going back to the same old Dayton place makes it a hell of a lot easier for out-of-town folks to find and arrange for practice time, and makes going to a new town even more of a logistical nightmare, except for locals.

In the earliest years WGI World Championships moved around quite a bit before settling down mostly in Dayton. In 1990 World Championships was in Buffalo, NY, 1997 in Phoenix, AZ, early 2000's in San Diego, CA, Milwaukee, WI a bit later, and maybe a few other moves I've forgotten. Units on the coasts and other far-flung places have complained for many years about always having to travel long distances and "why can't it be (here) for a change?" But with the huge need for rehearsal time requiring cooperation from many schools and districts and other logistical nightmares moving championships in more recent years has been fraught with enough difficulties to make staying at Dayton awfully attractive. And it's certainly much closer to being a central location than the other locales clamoring for a turn.

Y'all somehow failed to remember "Drum Town" from 1982 Bette Midler's brief TV show: http://youtu.be/v6IyJLQQ5j0

Ted's Montana Grill - 5910 W 86th St., #134 Traders Point Order the bison filet, it's the best steak I've ever had. Period. Don't chicken-out and order beef instead - the bison is fabulous! Their veggies and sides are superb too!

Not long ago, a girl I knew with years of drum corps and winterguard experience (and hardly prudish) refered to drum corps as "nude marching band", and went on to explain that corps kids roasting on the field start rolling up their already skimpy clothing til it's as tiny as possible and, as she put it, "there's precious little left for the imagination". Plus they'll peel off and change clothes almost anywhere, public or not. And after drum corps they go back to help at a school band camp where the dress code is nothing skimpier than full-length sleeved t-shirts and long baggy shorts. Add to that the wierd trend of ultra modesty/prudishness that has taken over school systems everywhere so that kids aren't required to shower after gym classes or sports practices, and those that choose to do so shower with bathing suits on - even in shower rooms with individual private dressing/shower rooms. Almost ten years ago I remember a WGI regional at Miamisburg HS (of all places!) when HS girls from some other unrelated activity got completely flustered when they discovered women in the locker room showering naked. Natural shyness is understandable but cozening it to the extreme degree that now appears the norm is beyond the pale. Nevertheless, prudent awareness of local norms and doing your best to appear to be following them is always a good policy. Brazenly flaunting them guarantees endless trouble.

My son is in his third year with the Cavies and they have never allowed water bottles in his time. He hasn't reported anybody seriously complaining about it - the Med staff ruthlessly imposes regular water breaks w/coolers & dispo cups. It hasn't prevented everything but the corps seems to think it's prevented enough. Apparently it IS sustainable.

We were in row 53 almost dead on the fifty. The sound was very bad compared to the two shows the weekend before and the view was just attrocious. The pictures posted earlier show very clearly how much of the pit area is burried in the front wall - from the photographer's standing position, and pretty clearly the very shallow angle of the seats and how much the heads of people were blocking the view for folks behind. I'm sure that there were some spots, like the front seats in a tiered section well above the folks in the back of the tier below them, that might have had good views, but they could not be very plentiful. As far as concessions go, three hours on a hot humid night with the possibility of baking in the sun at times is a long time to expect people to go without something to drink, even if they don't have kids, relatives, dates or friends with them also in need of something to drink or eat.

Seems rather odd to me that nobody is noting the big drops in scores from just the night before in La Crosse - 1 to almost 2 points for everybody except Blue Stars only dropping .65! I think the corps all performed relatively well, but the stadium just plain sucked. The top-level seats (VIP) and the press box with the judges just soared way above normal projection angles for the performers, making the sound in the upper-level high-price seats like mine (still 30-40 feet below the judges seats) very thin and airy. Without any perimeter track, the front ensembles and drum majors were jammed up against the high front wall, which must have bounced a lot of sound away from the front stands. On top of that, the seating areas were divided into tiers that had more reflective front walls bouncing sound away, and very shallow slopes so that (despite the towering heights of the stands) the view was awfull, along with the sound. Everybody in our section had to give up trying to see the pit or even the drum majors, and there were at least two heads of people in front of us blocking the view (and more sound) all the way to the back hash or even the back sideline. The only way any of us could see over the people in front was to lean forward on the edge of our seats and block the view for everybody behind, or stand up - which is clearly what the photographers who posted the earlier pix had to do. We didn't do either and just had to stew, and keep leaning around trying to see things between all the heads. This stadium goes right to the top of my "never again" list of crappy venues! On top of that, only after most people had climbed up many levels of ramps to their seats did they find out that there weren't any food or drink concessions inside the stadium - only two tents out in a back field behind the stadium, about ten stories below and behind the souvie stands outside. This may be why there are all these food comments in this thread. On the positive side, there were hardly any lines at the tents and service was fast - presumably because people had no idea they were there or didn't want to make the long treks down and back up to their seats. The Taco Bell comments are presumably inspired by the shortest route to the stadium from the Red Roof Inn or Fatty's Pub and Grill threading through the Taco Bell parking lot to the gap between the board and chain-link fences and through the apartment complex behind - which appeared to be well-traveled last night. Nevertheless, I would recommend ignoring the short-cut advice and just skipping Dekalb entirely in the future.

Not so fast, Tonto. Does your relative spreads theory have a track record showing it to be a better predictor then current rankings, weighted or otherwise? Or Hostrauser's rankings? If so, then trot it out. I suspect that the track record wouldn't show your assumptions to be as safe as you think they are, especially this early in the season.

Uh . . . not quite sure where you get yur 'rithmetic, but Cavies have been hanging in the #4 spot over SCV (#5) and Crown (#6) for several shows now - and that includes the weighted rankings, not just the most recent shows, with Bloo ahead of them by barely two tenths of a point. I suspect you are just making these ranking numbers up by ESP because they have no connection with any real-world statistics. This is why I really appreciate Hostrauser's DCI Rankings. When is his Week 2 due out?

This is getting just plain silly. These aren't handicap numbers made up by Hostrauser acting as a bookie. These are just number-crunching the first week's statistical results - and all the numbers and data-points are just judges first guesses at the very beginning of the season. There are way too many balls in the air and wildcards to draw ANY kind of conclusions - except to debunk the critics carping that these numbers don't reflect their fantasy orgasmic finals wet dreams. This thread had already built up how many pages of predictions and commentary before there were any scores or actual performance competitions at all? And, now, with at least a modest early handful of numbers to crunch a lot pipe dreams have gone up in smoke. Deflating the gasbags is a really helpful service and Hostrauser's numbers really do tend to make that happen.

At first read this looked like sarcasm so I checked his first week rankings last year: HOSTRAUSER'S DCI RANKINGS - Week 1 (6/24-6/30) 98.30 Carolina Crown 98.15 Blue Devils 98.10 The Cadets 95.45 Santa Clara Vanguard 93.85 Phantom Regiment 92.80 Bluecoats 91.05 Madison Scouts 89.75 Blue Knights 89.35 The Cavaliers 87.80 Boston Crusaders 86.95 Spirit of Atlanta 84.25 Pacific Crest ------------ Finals Cut-line ---------------- 83.50 Blue Stars 83.20 Crossmen 82.50 Troopers . . . hmmmmm . . . Not all that far off from finals results as far as E vs. W goes, except for the unfortunate Pacific Crest, . . . and Blue Knights if you consider Colorado part of the West Coast. Carolina Crown 98.300 Blue Devils 98.050 The Cadets 96.950 Santa Clara Vanguard 96.850 Bluecoats 93.350 Phantom Regiment 93.250 The Cavaliers 90.500 Boston Crusaders 90.400 Madison Scouts 90.100 Blue Knights 87.750 Spirit of Atlanta 86.400 Blue Stars 85.450

Based on the number-crunching from drum corp's version of Nate Silver (fivethirtyeight.com), an awful lot of you look like you've been drinking the kool-aid. I recommend y'all go on the wagon and follow the trend lines. HOSTRAUSER'S DCI RANKINGS - Week 1 (6/18 - 6/29) 98.25 The Cadets 98.20 Blue Devils 97.60 Carolina Crown 95.85 Bluecoats 94.55 Santa Clara Vanguard 93.10 Cavaliers 92.95 Phantom Regiment 89.45 Madison Scouts 87.80 Boston Crusaders 85.95 Blue Knights 85.95 Blue Stars 83.30 Spirit of Atlanta ------------ Finals Cut-line ---------------- 83.00 Troopers 82.55 Crossmen 78.50 Colts

Marie was only one of the six judges that had Cavies in first. Two had Regiment in first and the percussion judge had them in third. The spread was .75 and Marie was only responsible for .15 of that. Does DebbieT come in for an equal share of your sarcasm?

Nope. Boston dead last in visual composition is more plausible. I thought their show was a visual train wreck with appropriate aural sound effects. The other bloggers mentioning the DTorchia seperated-from-reality effect are on to something. The beknighted Boston flacks (what DOES BAC stand for, anyway?) positing that their guard should have been much closer to or over Cavies have just been drinking their own cool-aid. Sal Adamo was being generous putting that hideous menagerie six tenths over Spirit.

Yup. You're dead. You've logged what, like, a half dozen or so comments on the WGI season and all the regionals are over? You sleep with the fishes. I'm prejudiced, but I suspect the cause is what I've always hated most about this forum - that the OCD moderator(s?) of this forum have been so obsessive about keeping everything so nicey-pie and enforcing all the minute rules, ESPECIALLY NO VIDEO LINKS!!!, that nobody had any good reason to keep tuning in. The main DCP forums are still alive because they don't seem to be moderated by kindergarten teachers and they seem to be mostly a free-for-all. But the lack of abundent moving-picture content in a HIGHLY VISUAL DEPENDENT ACTIVITY will probably doom them too, if they don't change.

And some days on pre-tour, etc. But we are talking about teen-to-twenty-something young dudes here, who may (often) do not use the option to communicate with their parents. Surprise (not)! I work with several winter guards and every year we have a crop of kids who get good enough to make it into DCI finalist corps. Their summer experience is generally beneficial, except for all the various hurt feelings generated by all their endless moment-to-moment twitters, facebook postings, etc., culminating in multiple kids not coming back to their home winterguard unit because of hurt feelings or other internet-posting generated estrangements. Our son comes back from Cavies relatively unscathed but soon hears all the dirty details and complains loudly that they ALL should have had their phones confiscated for the summer. I defer to his greater experienced judgement on this issue, even though I normally consider his judgement to be on the same level as other large, lethargic slugs with hair, at best.

Yes, Dude, You are absolutely right - that you are guessing. I've only been involved in these "pagentry" activities for twenty-some years, helped organize from the beginning and raise to medal-winning level more than one long-lived top-level competing unit and helped with many specific design elements of lots of other very successful units. My own children came along a bit after I had already been deeply involved and I've had a rather weird path to learning how to act like a good parent, when around other parents in these activities. For a couple of decades and more I've been going to DCI shows and finals with a trunk-full of care-packages to deliver to all the kids and working staff folks I know back in the bus-parking back acres - in the odd times when I'm not actually delivering stuff they need to add to their shows. I'm guessing that I know a hell of a lot more about all aspects of DCI and all the other marching activities (and relatively renowned and famous folks involved in them) than you do.

Wow! Some of you folks need to lighten up. But to answer the original question (our son will be on his third tour with Cavies next summer), there are a lot of reasons why cell phones - and especially the now omnipresent smart phones - become huge distractions and problems anytime during the season, even pre-tour when a lot of first-time corps parents would be most anxious to find out how their kid is doing. We were just as anxious the first year but we learned that no news was mostly good news. 1. First and most obvious, instead of making friends, developing new relationships and/or just learning a lot of important new lessons about how to learn to adapt and fit in when immersed in a very stressful environment amid a sea of mostly strangers, kids with their phones tune out and just communicate with their same old cell phone/facebook/twitter/whatever circle and ignore the most important people and things that are going on in the real world around them. 2. Worse yet, the real people around them just become convenient gossip and complaint fodder for the entertainment of their essentially useless non-present virtual pals, a very counterproductive behavior that tends to compound problems. 3. And then there is the additional distraction from productive attention and healthy socialization that is inevitable, especially among young males suddenly without any regular contact with females their own age, with the "smart" phones' abilities to easily tap a world-wide ocean of porn, more or less continuously. The allure of such stuff usually isn't as obvious to us parents as it is glaringly apparent to our kids. Plenty of the Cavies kids will cheat and turn in dummy phones and keep their real phones stashed, but the rule at least makes their use furtive and infrequent, and makes the social atmosphere, especially in their off time, a heck of a lot more healthy than what prevails around the other corps that do nothing to deter cell-phone obsession.

Based on the finals scores, can we now call this topic over? Along with "Cavies' Struggles" and any other threads based on notions that somehow these two corps have to climb over one or the other's defeated carcasses before they can move forward? It seems to me that both had shows that were greatly appreciated by the audiences, huge strengths they can build on, and that (ignoring for the moment the awkward Boston interloper) both stand ready to duke it out next year with some pretty exalted competitors that any corps should be proud to be in earnest contention with. Ain't that enough?

Isn't it interesting how all the blowhards on this topic have suddenly made themselves scarce lately? Guess the subject only interested them when Madison was beating Cavies and they could crow about how much they were going to beat them by . . . and then some others, and just how bad they thought Cavies would be . . . like, maybe, non-finalists. Now that a new Cavalier calamity doesn't look very likely there doesn't seem to be anything of interest to them left in the subject. I tend to agree heartily with the blogger who said that now both corps have solid crowd-pleasing programs that they can build on for the future. And neither should be wishing for the other to take a dive, I would add.

I do too, but a lot of bloggers are flogging this topic on other threads. Back to the front.....just because.

Aren't you glad that there wasn't any way for anybody to take you up on that wager? I suppose you can take some solace in Marie's calling the Cavies spread over Scouts' guard only eight tenths of a point instead of a full point. She was probably being cautious but I think that was still the biggest spread she has put between their guards all year.

As I said in the beginning of this thread - Can we get all the bloggers flogging this matchup to do it on a thread with a title that is relevant to their topic? After tonight's second time Cavies outscored Scouts proved that last night's wasn't just a fluke ("outlier" if you're trendy), it's time for some people to admit that Cavies just might place higher than eighth.

Beg to differ about the guard score - the spread should be even wider. If you compared their guard books simultaneously on a split-screen the gap would be glaringly wide. Mike Lentz may disagree but a bunch of those Cavies kids beat his guard at WGI this winter and a lot of folks thought that was long overdue. Of course, Onyx had long been filling their shows with endless sequentials, ripples, solos, etc. with virtually no unison ensemble work. Sound familiar?