N.E. Brigand

Jerry's not at, um, liberty to say anything aobut the pool boy or the photos.

Seriously, what are we to infer from this news? Any chance that it bodes financial difficulties rather than human resources difficulties, which is what some have implied above?

There's no chance they were bitten by rabid bats, right?

Did they resign or did they agree to take an indefinite leave of absence?

All the more reason to do it. See who can overcome adversity the best.

Oh please.

Uh, says who?

I think Fred meant a tour would be "essential to DCI's (or the corps') survival" or something like that. He may be wrong about that, but I don't think it's fair to read him as claiming that drum corps were in the same category as, say, hospitals or grocery stores.

No discredit meant to Hillsdale College, at all; by most accounts it's a solid liberal arts college with a storied history and it provides a great experience for its students. And it's in a charming little town, too (I passed through there once and stopped briefly while returning from a conference to the north). I was quite serious in praising their spirit of innovation, and I totally believe that their fogger works as described; I just wonder whether that actually makes a significant difference. Here's hoping it does. Also I absolutely agree that it may be entirely to drum corps' advantage to take such measures even if they are nothing more than theater. Appearances count for much, and if potential housing sites can be swayed by these things, by all means adopt them. As for the limitations of Wikipedia, if someone has a better general free online encyclopedia that provides basic information on pretty much any subject, by all means point me to it. (Note that page identifies both some advantages and disadvantages of security theater.) Don't know whether it qualifies as news, though, fake or otherwise. In general, I find that when someone throws out the term "fake news," and I ask them to list some news sources they trust, I get no answer. For a lot of people, the term seems to mean "sources that report things I don't want to hear about, even if they're true," but I know you don't think that way and were just using it as a figure of speech. (FWIW, my biggest gripe about the media is the tendency to "both sides" everything. Objectivity is not the same thing as neutrality.)

Love me some Glinka.

Good for Hillsdale. Innovation is wonderful, although I wonder if in the end, measures like will prove to be anything more than security theater.

I vaguely recall someone else here, at some point in the past ten years, talking up how crisp Phantom's feet were in 2001.

There was one formerly prolific poster here who could not say often enough in 2010 how much he didn't care for Bela Bartok, going so far as to emphasize that Bartok's funeral was sparsely attended. This was in response to SCV's show of that year. Thinking back, though, I don't remember him saying much about Phantom having previously performed the same piece.

This is hard.

I've told the story before about how at the Massillon show in 2010, one of the sponsors was the Cavaliers, meaning the basketball team not the drum corps. This was just a month after "The Decision", and I think they were pretty concerned about sales falling now that LeBron James was going to Miami. While the scores were being tabulated, they brought out their mascot and a spokesman who talked up the team and launched t-shirts into the crowd. The spokesman clearly hadn't seen the performances and had no idea what it was all about, but he had a list of the participating corps and was under the impression that either the corps themselves or their fans were now seated in blocks in the stands, so as the t-shirt catapult was being variously aimed, he'd call out, "Where is the Santa Clara Vanguard corpse? ... Where is the Bluecoats corpse? ... Where is the Troopers corpse?" and so on. Lots of laughs at that flub. I like to think that someone found him later and explained it to him, and that he probably winced upon realizing his mistake, and since then he knows better. Although I suppose it's possible that his friends and associates still insist that he was right, and that highly educated and cosmopolitan spokesmen like himself know that you're supposed to pronounce "corps" as "corpse," and to prove their case they point to the video of Brandt Crocker saying "Drum Corpse International" when he introduced Academy's show in 2016. (Which was, as it happens, the second time, and the last time to date, that I attended Finals in person.)

I'd probably just watch Finals on Flo this year, but thinking back to my first time I attended Finals, it was when BD won in 2012 offering, and so I was amused a few minutes ago while reading some commentary on current events that began like this: "It's like the Cabaret Voltaire, but stupid."

I think this might be the group I was thinking of, although the video I remember was outdoors and had more bicycles:

Seriously, it's the least they could do.

Looks like perfect weather for them to open the roof. And it's forecast to be that way all three days, with no rain predicted until after 3 a.m. Sunday morning.

Which international corps, if any (other than Canada's Stentors), were going to participate in DCI this year? Was this the year Kidsgrove Scouts were going to come to DCI? One of my favorites. Aggressive and with something of an old-school flavor. Wasn't there a group from Thighland that was going to attend a few years ago but then couldn't make it? The group that had used all the bicycles in their previous year's show?

I agree that DCI needs to go above and beyond to address the stigma of Hopkins, et al.

There's a video of Vienna Teng explaining how she came up with "The Hymn of Acxiom" and a friend with access to a powerful marketing database and how "it creeped her out that her husband was in this database with all his favorite magazine subscriptions, and the stuff that he'd bought recently, and stuff that he thought about buying but hadn't bought yet."

I'm a let you finish, but what's funny is I did type Southwind at first, but before I posted I changed it.