N.E. Brigand

Maybe another corps could have medalled for the first time? Guardians? Given their repertoire history, and given recent developments, I think they should do a Taylor Swift show.

"Gonna be a man in motion ..." toward the restrooms?

Oh, were they returning to O.C. championships this year? I hadn't realized that.

No shows today, though, right? Prelims would be tomorrow, wouldn't they?

A lot of good points to chew on in this fine post. That said, while I'd never wish an alleged sexual predator like Hopkins well, and while long before we knew about that behavior I had made clear my disagreements with his vision of drum corps, I don't think he was operating in a vacuum, nor do I think we can deny that he did some good as well. Bill Cosby's show was beloved family entertainment; Harvey Weinstein produced some films still widely regarded as excellent; Kevin Spacey is universally thought of as a great actor. Maybe some other work by some better people would have risen to the top in their place; maybe the Cadets would have won ten championships under different leadership; maybe the organization would have founded Cadets2, whose existence I considered a boon to DCA (despite some of Hopkins's apparent attempts at meddling in that organization--not that DCA didn't/doesn't need shaking up). And maybe somebody else would have pushed the malignant trends that concern you.

There's one advertiser who pre-video ads I keep encountering on Youtube, also cultish in its messaging (which is however, more subtle and completely different from the message of the Facebook-dominant group I mentioned) and partly funded, curiously enough, by a heavily promoted traveling theatrical troupe that puts on extravagant spectacles (think Blast! without instruments, or Cirque du soleil) laced with bizarre propaganda.

Or perhaps it was Gold who took it all.

Both sites are increasingly being overrun by nuts, like the cult that believes that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his 1999 airplane death and has since been secretly working to identify the members of underground child trafficking rings, work which supposedly is imminently to result in the mass arrest of hundreds or thousands of famous personalities, who will be judged, so the true believers say, by military tribunals. No, I don't get it, either. And mind you, they've been saying this outcome is imminent for a couple years now. Like all millennial cults, it takes a lot of disappointment and a lot of time for members to be shaken from their faith. And sometimes they never give it up. Just ask Jim Jones's followers. Oh wait, you can't. (Did you that it wasn't Kool-aid they drank but Flavor-aid? I only learned that today.) I'm not making this up: there is such a cult that believes that nonsense, and it has a lot of followers. And thus to bring this back to what you were discussing -- the quality of comments on Facebook -- I note that three of the top ten stories on Facebook yesterday reached that status thanks to those people. Edit (Aug. 15): And now this cult has graduated to actually kidnapping children, supposedly to "rescue" them from their parents.

And finally, for now, Cincinnati Tradition, although I have to say that their donation page is not very user friendly: it forces you to give only in certain pre-set amounts.

And the Columbus Saints, who made great strides from 2018 to 2019; I fear that a year off will set them back again.

And then the Bluecoats, of course.

That means starting with Rogues Hollow Regiment, the Sound Sport performance ensemble who were to have made their DCA debut this year.

I'm acting locally and making my donations in order of proximity.

Malignant narcissism, perhaps?

yeah one would think so

Corps should perform more marches. This Sousa march, for instance, is a favorite of mine, although I mistakenly believed... ...that it was named for the famous granite monolith in the well-known national park in California. You know the one I mean: (And you probably know how to pronounce it, too!) But I was wrong! It was actually from an operetta that Sousa wrote that has nothing to do with Yosemite: Speaking of the original El Capitan, I highly recommend this 2018 documentary:

Very much this. (But cixelsyd notes a potentially important caveat.)

Maybe this year Legends would have won their first O.C. title. Or would Spartans have repeated?

Animal Farm.

Me too. And then tomorrow I'd be driving to Indiana to see Open Class Finals.

And I'm glad someone apparently is!

Do you keep track of bands in all circuits?

A whole bunch of newly-composed music here, written with quarantining or social distancing in mind: I wonder if anything in that collection will be remembered as a standard work in the future.

Last year at this time I was at the Mythopoeic Society conference, which in 2019 was held in San Diego, and I got back on Monday just in time to get to Akron.

Trying to figure what it would take for a corps to do something like this: