Weaklefthand4ever

@Sutasaurus has EXCELLENT left hand positioning in relation to the head! That left elbow gap is nearly perfect especially for a "dino!" I'm jealous sir.....

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One of trainers got her new laptop last week and sent me a message in Teams asking where the DVD drive was. I told her she was about 5 years too late. And to think, my generation turned 5 1/4 single sided disks into double sided disks using a square hole punch...

I was REALLY lucky that we had a Hi-Fi Buys here that went out of business in maybe the late 90's. My brother (Dr. Sternberg) and I bought all our stereo gear from there and when they went under he came back to town and we went wish list shopping. Then I found a Concert Hall MMF 5 turntable and added some Polk Audio speakers. The vintage stuff sounds soooo goooood.

See THAT is a proactive approach that is sorely needed by other corps. PR played the PR game very well here. I gotta say there is an art to reading the room, and with the current status of some of the corps out there, this is the smartest approach they could have taken at this point. Well done Phantom Regiment...well done indeed.

Agreed and this is where siloing becomes a problem. The "teeth" would have to come from a governing body and the training and compliance would need 3rd party oversight. All of this being said, we don't necessarily know what is going down behind the curtains at DCI or the member corps. That's just reality. There may be plans in motion that we're unaware of. That doesn't in any way go against the ideas presented here (and in other threads,) meant to present possible solutions. One of the big problems we have with the current model is a lack of transparency amongst many of the member corps and DCI itself. People are FAR more open have useful discourse and come to sustainable solutions when the cards on the table can be clearly seen by all interested parties. Some changes have to be kept close to the vest for various reasons, but that should not completely eliminate transparency.

I think in general, people have a great deal of respect for the DM's. I always had excellent DM's from a leadership perspective. I would agree that in modern shows, it would be very tough to only have one DM as shows now have a great deal of challenges in listening environment, sight lines etc. The spreads of the shows now are huge. All that being said, drummers will always joke around. It's just what we do lol. I certainly meant no offense if any was taken.

Oh God...that might even be worse then 18 drummers all gooking at the same time. A bus full of DM's all conducting in oddball time signatures simultaneously. NOPE

And then there's 7 which is like flipping half of the bat signal upside down and leaving the other half... In all seriousness, Mandi's should have a great season with this staff coming back. I wonder how much battery and pit talent they'll get. I see another stellar year for percussion in our future.

And I think that's the key. It has to be independent. In the corporate world, it's easy. There are agency's on the outside for employment review and everything else under the sun in wvery state. In this world (marching arts) maybe it isn't as simple. I simply don't know.

And only as good as the teeth that back up it's bark. A rule with no consequences is an annoyance, not a rule. Corps like their control and to clean their own house. DCI could govern but really only does (at least outwardly...and we have to admit that we may not know everything that happens behind the scenes,) when they absolutely have to. @Jeff Ream was spot on there. But that leaves a vacuum. A corps won't bite itself and DCI won't bite them. So where is the incentive to proactively handle issues before they become actual member safety impacting?

That will indeed be interesting. I feel we have to openly realize two things. And this is in NO WAY a pass on what has happened. The people that know me, know exactly where I stand on these issues. I'm just really practiced at being always calm. 1. The marching arts community has a long tradition of closing it's/their eyes, hurriedly scampering to put out the fire and then praying that nothing would ever come to light. And that's not unique to marching arts. After a while of dodging bullets, you feel invincible. And then the internet happened.... 2. The bigger the problem, the more costly and difficult the solution (in time, money, and bandwidth.) To roll out a single curriculum to all the corps in DCI / WGI is cheap. Like...I do this for a living...I calculated the development time because I'm a dork. But to host it, report from it at will, update records, administer changes and then also figure out how to train and put compliance into action so it has some teeth.....that's expensive. I don't feel like DCI nor most corps could fathom the workloads involved. And because it's about member safety, it simply cannot happen soon enough. Here's the thing about DCI (and the corps.) Once the problem is big enough, the rollout to fix it might have taken years. What happens during those years while you enact this change? How many reports arise? Change is hard. But communicating change is easy. If there is a plan, and I HAVE to think there is, communicate it. Just admit that there is a problem and tell us what you're doing. Just do the #### thing.

Posting someone's private information publicly (name, address, place of employment, etc.)

Never play with laser pointers if the battery is up on props. They WILL chase them. "Oooooo...shinnnnnnyyyyy!!!" **thud**

Exactly. Or you fall off props. Either way, I'm glad the immediate care is there to help the members recover. Kudos for that. Prevention is what I would be curious about.

I was wondering the exact same thing. That would seem to me to be something that would be a big, red flag to DCI. That's nearly, what, 3 times (at minimum) the average number of concussions per NFL team in 2022? And concussions are not something that happens due to lack of off season prep.

That gives a bit more context, so my thanks. As a general rule, I try to take everything into consideration. Generally speaking, lack of proper management trickles down and creates the environment where poor placement almost inevitable. It may take more than one season, but it eventually catches up to the corps. I think we can all agree that if you aren't having fun, the experience is not going to be as good as we would all like it to be. That being said, I am certainly not neive enough to believe in some utopian drum corps world where everything is just unicorns and butterflies. It never was when I marched. It's a balance. Now does placement matter? Of course. We all want to win. It's a competitive activity for goodness sakes. The hope though, IMHO, would be that even if you aren't top 3, you can find growth, knowledge, friendship and development in whatever corps you're in. Thank you again for clarifying.

Maybe I'm confused....I hope that's the case. Both quality of the performance you put out there, quality of the learning experience AND having fun matters. Did the OP mention placement? If placement is all that mattered, we would only have a top 3.

To this day, one of the great mysteries of drumlines is exactly HOW quads manage to find time to get in so much trouble while simultaneously finding a way to add at least 678 visuals into a 12 minute show.

Awesome article and well deserved. The mention of Spirit Camp brought back memories of being dropped off there by our band director. To this day I still can't quite recall how exactly that happened lol. I need to ask him.

A few weeks back one of my trainers said in chat "Boss, you know that sometimes your old man humor isn't really funny, right?" A week later she asked me to order her a new X1 Carbon laptop for classes to which I replied (in chat) "You know xxxxx, sometimes your young person humor isn't really funny, right?"

That's beautiful...what is that velvet?

Alas so do I....lol. That commercial is still better than the entire 8 episodes of Clash of the Corps. The only reason the euph (I think it was a euph...) player got to snag the kids chicken is because they didn't have quads back then. The quads always get in the most trouble..

Which one?!?! First, I flippin' LOVED the Glassmen. But if we're talking about Bloo Alumni, I can tell you that it's a ton of my dorky ear to ear grinning that I don't do at work, lots of "wow" and "holy #### that's loud," and several other, more direct expletives that get you an R rating if you say them more than once in a movie. Now, if say Michael Cesario was bathing in chocolate up on top of the ramp during Great Gig In The Sky....I would find babies to throw!

Had a buddy in HS who had one. He had "Das Killer Kibble Vagon" pained on the side. I drove a 73' Super Beetle back then.