Precious Roy

The official, National Weather Service, forecast for Lisle Friday night is a 40% chance of thunderstorms. That's a pretty typical rain chance for much of the country for a July afternoon/evening. So, the answer to your first question is "Maybe, but more likely not." Sorry, I cannot provide any insight on your second question.

They could even inspect their "uniforms" while they were at it.

How about this compromise: Drummers want their work to be judged fairly, fully, and up close. Visual designers don't want the drum judge mucking up the drill. Everybody wants everybody involved to be safe. So, let's have the percussion section be judged in a standstill before the field performance, so that the up close percussion judges can assign their scores without getting in the way of drill. Perhaps even allow (the same or different) percussion judges to adjust their score based on the ensuing field performance (because, GE and stuff). How about this loophole to the current rules (and stated/implied rules associated with them): A stellar percussion battery section has a particularly juicy feature coming up, and wants to make sure the percussion judge sees it fully and properly. But it would be most effectively performed in a form that is backfield a bit. Whoops, one of the snares "accidentally" looses a stick, right in front of the judge in the 2-yard zone, right before quickly marching backfield to prepare for the feature. In the interest of safety, the judge picks up the loose stick, and starts towards the snare to return it. He arrives just in time to see a killer percussion feature performed flawlessly -- up close. And scores it accordingly. The snare may or may not eventually accept her stick back, and the judge may or may not follow the snares around to attempt to return it.

My wife and I registered at Target when we got married. We put a frozen pizza and a six pack of beer on the registry.

One of my family's Christmas traditions is eating pizza on Christmas day. To make that Christmas day pizza special, we abstain from anything pizza and pizza-related between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We call it the pizza fast. Hardest month of the year, food wise.

I mean in general. Like, after the "is your corps ready" salute, and during appropriate parts of the show. It's a fun, happy, show. I just wish the drum majors would break more from "game face" and show some fun, happy, emotion. And, tbh, perhaps they are, and the videos I've seen just haven't captured it.

Love the drum major outfits. They (the drum majors, not their clothes) need to smile more.

As a meteorologist, the fact that the Colts have 7 stage props bothers me. Ice crystals are hexagons -- they should have stopped at 6.

Y'all start the trend, and I'll join along in Atlanta.

Get the crowd to do it during the field exit. But instead of "Hey, Jude" make it "Hey Blooo".

LOVED that show!

Possible bug: Noticed the Zionsville IN show was listed in both the "Recent Scores" and "Upcoming Shows" sections after the scores had been announced (but before the other show of the night on the west coast had started). It confused me, because I was not aware of the day, and I briefly thought there might be two shows in Zionsville (a la Allentown). Edited to add: perhaps it was a by-product of the accelerated show schedule due to weather.

Yay! I picked right this year for my Atlanta seats.

As a meteorologist, let me suggest to y'all to never believe the phone apps with hourly rain chances. Despite what the TV stations would have you believe, the state of the science isn't there yet. Also, between the months of March and September, to the east of the Rocky Mountains, there should never be a forecast of "it's going to rain all day," unless there's a hurricane or tropical storm involved. From late spring to early fall, the weather patterns really don't support that.

Didn't there used to be a way to sync up the bookmarks with the official DCP threads in the app? Or is that a pro version feature? Or am I mis-remembering this?

Except that The Beatles album was white. The black album was Metallica (which features a song that SCV is sourcing this year).

In youth baseball, we tell the kids there are 3 strike zones: the pitcher's version, the hitter's version, and the umpire's version. And only one version counts -- the umpire's. So it is up to you (the players), as hitters or a pitchers, to adjust accordingly. If a corps wants to be competitive in DCI, it will need to adjust to however the judging sheets are being interpreted by the judges during that particular show. Because, even though the fans have their idea of what makes a show "good," and the corps directors and designers have their idea of what makes a show "good," the only opinion that matters (from the competition standpoint) is the judges. So, if Stu's non-DCI experts have a different "strike zone" than Reams' preferred experts, the corps' show designers would probably adjust accordingly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus_(song)

Come to the Atlanta show, and get a seat anywhere in the lower section. You can then stand in the Delta Club, mere feet away from the FE.

Alice in Chains. I Stay Away.

Had a couple situations this past weekend at a local high school band competition: My 12-year-old son is a band helper for his high school's marching band. They are a smaller band, and so usually perform pretty early in the day. So, we arrived well before the start of the competition, and stayed for the whole thing. Group of people next to us were from another band in the same class as ours, so they were there the whole day as well. After a fine (but chilly) day of watching band shows, we finally made it to the larger, open class, bands. Two ladies from the other smaller band decided to have a random conversation/gossip session during one of the premier shows of the day, at full "outside voice" volume. When the music on the field got louder, so did they. It was quite disruptive, and they got the "turn and look" from several different directions around them. But they did not seem to catch the hint. So, at a somewhat quiet portion of the show, I finally slid over to them and politely (but sternly) said, "Excuse me, but can the conversation wait until between shows, please?" She looked at me like I was asking her to never speak again, and she sarcastically said "Sor-ry!" I got several mouthed "thank you"s from those sitting around us, and those ladies mostly kept quiet the rest of the show. But it really should not come down to that. There was an hour long dinner break/intermission in between the smaller groups and the larger groups. To kick off the latter half of the show, a local middle school band played the National Anthem (quite nicely, I might add). They were fairly large, for a middle school band. During a break between the AAA and open class shows, the middle schoolers were allowed to go to the concessions. But that decision was made a bit too late during the break, and they were still filing through the aisles and up the stairs (among the paying spectators) when the next band started playing. One of the leaders of the middle school band (obviously not the one that made the decision to dismiss them from their seats) was a bit embarrassed, recognized that they were going to be disrupting the start of the next band's show, and did everything she could to speed them up and get them up the stairs and out of the stands as quickly as possible. Kudos to her for at least having the situational awareness, to try to minimize a disruption caused by somebody else's ill-timed decision.

Interesting show. Operation: Mindcrime is more about political corruption (intertwined with a love story) rather than dystopian society. Perhaps this belongs more in the "music corps should do" thread.

Have 2 judges for each of the visual sub-captions. One focuses on difficulty (and provides the ceiling for the caption), and the other focuses on the execution (which becomes a percentage of the achievable difficulty).

Operation: Mindcrime. Although, it would probably be quite a chore to condense that album down to 13 minutes and still be able to get the story across. Perhaps just use "Suite Sister Mary" as the main show, and build around that. (BTW, as a heavy metal fan, I LOVE the "Stockholm Syndrome" idea. That would have been perfect for Carolina Crown a few years back)

Be sure to check out the results of this challenge as well.