KVG_DC

Airblade isn't far from a Klingon Bat'leth. Which is kinda cool to me. SVC used lighting bolts for Force of Nature, which looked pretty well when they hit the storm.

Ok no. THIS is the most off season thread of the off season!

DC was surreal with the sky literally buzzing with helicopters. Then air silence for weeks. I remember walking the DC AIDS walk in early October and flights had just resumed a few days earlier. When a plane went over, such a commonplace thing usually, we all sort of stopped up a bit and looked up at it.

It's a weird place to be a drum corps fan. But I show people videos and they're awed anyway.

I was driving into DC that morning. It was a beautiful morning. The sky so blue. The heat of summer had finally broken. It was early in the semester and the campus ministers were to have our first Tuesday AM meeting. Such an incredible morning I'd left the TV off because who wants noise when there's such an amazing sky out there. I'm driving in and US 50 where it turns into town and becomes New York Avenue is in the middle of what must have been a decade long construction project. Traffic is light and while I'm after the bulk of the rush hour, there's usually more than this. But hey, that blue sky, the cooler air, light traffic, this is a great day. My pager goes off, it's one of those 'two lines of text' pagers of the time and about all that we deaf folk could get. I pull it out of the holster and look real quick coming down the Baltimore Washington Parkway but have to sort of hurry because my exit for US 50/NY Ave is coming up. TURN ON UR TV. THIS IS BAD. My heart skips a beat. Our campus had two murders happen the year before and the person I'm getting this message from was a graduate student working with campus security. Each semester, it was about three weeks into the semester that it happened. And...we're about at week three. Well. I'm on my way in. I guess I'll find out when I arrive. I take my exit, round the turn. US 50 drops onto NY Ave at a rise and there's a brief moment when you're a bit higher than the city before you drop down into the bowl. On a clear day, you can see across the city. There was an amazing blue sky that morning. Then a brown cloud rises up way across the horizon. I actually remember rationally thinking through, "Is this it? Nuclear bomb? Should I turn around and head out? Ok, if it's nuclear, I'm already dead. If it's not, there's a bona fide crisis and the campus needs the campus ministers who can get there, i'm going in. Besides, with the construction, I'd have to go wrong way on this side of the road to turn around, I probably could without the traffic, but nah." All this in the span of the few seconds it took waiting to see if it would mushroom up and have a ring and then realizing, "Oh, wait. right. No flash. Probably not nuclear." The things we grew up learning after seeing The Day After on TV. I get to campus. The Catholic campus minister is there and glad to see me because he knows I have a small TV in my office to use for showing VHS tapes of ASL bible verses. I've got no antennae but we rig a paper clip wrapped to a wire coat hanger that's twisted to a metal window frame and get a signal. He's telling me what's happened and we get the signal and no sooner tune in and...the South Tower collapses. We're silent. Stunned. I finally am able to say...I saw a brown cloud over the Virginia side of the city... There's a slight panic between us. They break in with news on the Pentagon. ---- Our campus at the time had a high number of international students. Being the only university in the world designed entirely for deaf students, we attracted people from everywhere. The student government wanted to do a vigil that Friday evening with candles and an open stage for people to share their thoughts. Administration was super nervous about the idea of an open stage. During the murders the year before, things that were 'open stage' tended to get high strung and out of control as emotions soared and tempers flared for various reasons. Students were adamant about the open stage, so... the plan was, two large tables with large black cloths on both sides of the platform outside that were way too big for the number of candles for people to pick up. I and a staff person were at one table, two others at the other table, if hate speech began, we were to pull up the cloth and cover the stage. The visual equivalent of "cutting the mic." We were ready for the worst. We didn't need it. First speaker up..."I'm from Belfast, I grew up with bombs happening in the streets around us and people marching through the streets every summer. You'll be ok..." "I'm a Muslim from West Bank, my girlfriend is Jewish from Jerusalem. We met at the deaf school because they didn't have separate schools for us deaf like they do for the hearing. Our families can't know we're in love. We grew up with ..." "I'm from Somalia, my family fled with ..." "I'm from Liberia, I grew up in a camp in Ghana..." Yeah, there were a couple of US students who stood up and talked about the strength and pride of America, including one distraught student from NYC who had just learned her family was OK that morning. But it was the world comforting us, and the world welcoming us to the reality of their world of uncertainty. As much as I remember 9.11, I'll remember 9.14 even more. I miss the feeling of that evening after the fear took over again and our international students began to feel more and more uncomfortable and have more and more trouble being able to get the visas and entry into the US to study here. It was a beautiful blue sky that morning.

Hmm. The movies thing is interesting too. I'd say my taste in movies tends to draw from more classics from before i existed actually. With a fair few international films included. And more recent stuff. But then college was when I had the time (or made the time) to discover classic movies and international cinema with my friends..so...

Alright, I'll take a stab at an off season thread topic for once. A friend of mine posted up some thoughts on this study on human memory. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140219095325.htm The upshot being, when asked to recall the 'memories of their lives' most adults went back to a period between 17 and 24. And that there is typically a cluster of years between 15 and 30 where people experience positive and negative things that remain formative to their identity in their memory. This age range was consistent across adults studied from a variety of ages. When naming the years for myself, the first thing that struck me were 1) those were my marching years (band for me), and 2) that's the era of shows (both band and DC) I tend to think of as "back in the day" and point to as 'the classics' despite my appreciation of shows of earlier or later eras. Does this hold true for you all too? I'm particularly wondering for those may have not been around the activity in those years but come to it later (i.e. I didn't march but my kid got into it and I'm hooked now). Is your BITD affinity to your own years or "when you discovered" the activity? And if your drum corps affinity window doesn't match your late teen to early 20 years, then how does your nostalgia of your Drum Corps affinity compare to your nostalgia for your memory bump window? Are they equally strong sense of nostalgia or does one draw more? Last thought, given that 17-24 window, I am reminded that the most important thing about this activity isn't the placement in the end. it's the experience and memories. When the placements we got didn't match our desires and where we thought we should have landed, it stung and stung hard when I was in the moment. At some point though, it became a "yeah, the placement still seems wrong, but we were #### good and had a great time doing all we did. And I learned a whole lot about working with others to pull off some amazing stuff" And that's the value of the activity for me in the end, it gave me memories that shape who I am and how I approach life even years later.

Huge jam of Birdland please

While I think we're likely to see some all original shows, particularly in Open Class where it may be easier to pay a composer than secure rights, a wholesale shift in the activity doesn't seem all that likely. That said Key Poulan has done some nice work. We'll probably see specific segments of original composition that bridge us between pieces of shows as arrangers go for more 'seamless' arranging though. How do you get from a 19th Century Romantic piece to a 21st century K-pop piece will stop being abrupt as arrangers compose a few minutes of music to get from A to B. Whether they start listing it in the reps as some have, or simply consider it part of the arranging as they pull from motifs in the both pieces to make the bridge may depend on the person doing it. In Open Class I can see the appeal of going all original not only because of rights hassle with less staff and board expertise, as well as less funds, but also from an instructional point of view wanting to get a show that challenges the members and grows their skills in specific ways. In World Class, I think there's too much GE to be gained in 'quickly remembered tunes' and enough resources and staff to arrange as the want for instructional goals to take the all original route that often.

That is a hilarious gaffe. I guess now we know why the Bass crew get the boiler helmets.

But seriously. I want this show. My mind's ear can already hear the hype of the mashup. "...a raspberry bere....liiitle red corvette!"

Nah. Needs to be a party show.

OOh another chance to pimp my reps idea...i really do want to see this.... A show that started with "Dearly Beloved......" could hype all it wanted. Alright reps: Let's Go Crazy {Preshow...Drum majors, is your corps ready? organ glissando, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called....life". DCI is proud to present, the Bluecoats! [music begins]) Sexy MF (with percussion features worked in) Purple Rain (power ballad) [1! 2! 1! 2! 3! 4!] Raspberry Beret/Litte Red Corvette meledy/mashup Purple Rain snippets tie it throughout. Adding more to this....guard HAS to have a big moment in heels. Edit: doesn't have to be Bloo...

Hmm. I...hadn’t paid attention? Heh.

Miss Cleo would have set you right

Can we get back to the fact that it was the Troopers who landed Rennick? Exciting.!

Mwah m mwah mwah mwah mwah

Conversely Terri Schehr, DrumManTx, and I are NOT multiple people sharing a single account. But we ARE a single hive mind sharing multiple accounts.

This may be the most entertaining post season thread I've read here already and we've not even gotten any confirmed staff announcements.

Yeah, I remember seeing the shoes. It was just the timing in the video you're watching along and there's all the passion and work they put into the season and show and then...it's just done. And the waterworks start.

Cuckoo for Coco Grauff!

Lol no. I'm bagging on the use of "new era"

Hah! "New era" just feels a lot like "outside of the box" now.