The New Tuba Cases Are Here !!!

            As a brief tribute to Steve Martin in “The Jerk”, “The new tuba cases are here.  The new tuba cases are here!”.  The band at Houston has been using sousaphone cases that were in such bad shape and so old they may have been manufactured by John Philip Sousa himself.  As was noted in a previous epistle, I have been raising money through donations to pay the $5,400 necessary to purchase these cases.  Ex-tuba players are notoriously cheap and I have ended up short of my goal.  Nonetheless, I ordered the cases and they are in.  My options are to leave the balance on my credit card and hope Amy pays for them or to have a fundraiser.  To that end, and knowing that not much gets by my wife, we are having a TRIVIA NIGHT on Friday, November 10, at 7:00 p.m. in the band room at Houston. 

            For those who are unfamiliar with our trivia night procedures, they are simple.  On that night, you need to arrive at the band hall just a little before 7:00.  The cost of participating is a mere $10.  You will join up with others to make teams no larger than 10 members each.  We will do 10 rounds of 10 questions each and award some sort of prize to the winning team.   Questions will come in categories like, “Things That Taste Like Chicken”, “Words That Rhyme With Mulroy”, and “How Many Nesvicks Does That Weigh”.  And now a quick story:

            We were having a trivia night some years back and some serious trivia players came as a team.  These were non-band, bar room trivia aficionados who expected to win.  At the end of regulation, they were tied with a rather rag tag group of band kids and parents.  The tiebreaker question was, “What’s the first thing you know?”  The serious team put their heads together and came up with what they thought to be a serious answer backed up by science and common sense.  Their answer was, “Your mother’s voice”.   The band team gave the correct answer, “Ol’ Jed’s a Millionaire”.  The serious folks never returned and the morale of the story is:  Don’t Be Too Serious!

We will have limited concessions (drinks, candy, pizza, caviar, road-kill).  The whole thing takes a little over 2 hours and can be lots of fun.  What I need is a lot of bodies to show up so ask your friends, former band mates, neighbors and pets.  At some point I will post a Sign-Up Genius asking for help with setting up, cleaning up, concessions selling, and score keeping.  Until then, please make plans to attend on Friday, November 10.  The thought of me sitting alone in the band room trying to figure out how to tell my wife we are now the proud owner of sousaphone cases should be motivation enough.  If you can’t make it and want to donate using the PayPal button on this blog, please do!  I hope to see many of you in November!

Have A Little Fun With It!

            I went to Houston versus Germantown football games for 25 years in a row.  Mostly I just laughed at the ridiculous seriousness of it all.  Sometimes fights would break out.  Not actual fights mind you, but what passes for fights among spoiled suburbanite children who want to shoot their mouths off and then look around for an adult to intervene before they have to pay a price for said mouthing.  Sometimes administrators and coaches would have been better off to take the doctor’s pledge, “First, do no harm”, as they got a little too wound up in us against them thing.  And sometimes it was just chaos.  Energy plus desire multiplied by youth. 

            Not that I find anything especially wrong with all that transpired.  I was responsible for some of the foolishness myself.  In the summer following my first year, Houston was hosting summer school.  A young man who was attending summer school and happened to be from Germantown High School wandered into the band room and started talking smack about band.  Not “football” mind you, but band!  He was wearing a GHS Band t-shirt with their logo on the front.  Some of my guys asked if they had to listen to such mouthing and I said no.  So, they held him down and cut the logo off the front of his t-shirt.  We actually still have the logo in our archives.  His mother called Mr. Clayton the next day to complain.  Mr. Clayton told her to dress her son more appropriately before sending him back to HOUSTON High School.  Today that would be a front-page article in the Commercial Appeal.  Which reminds me:  What do you get when you throw a Red Devil off the Empire State Building?  Applause.

            The first time we beat Germantown in football at their field, the Houston kids wanted to storm the field.  A problem arose because the field was protected by a rather high fence that had no gate in it on the visitor’s side.  This wasn’t going to stop a group of over adrenalized teenagers who began climbing the fence and jumping off the stands onto the track.  The principal of Germantown at that time was a quiet and unassuming man (sarcasm off).  He came toddling over to the visitor’s sideline and started yelling for the kids to get off the field.  He then pointed at me and yelled, “and shut that band up right away”.  We did what any self-respecting visiting rival band would do.  We played louder!  That was also the first night I had ever seen a football team (Germantown) come onto the field for the 2^nd half warm-ups while their own band was still performing.  Two thoughts:  Show respect for ALL kids efforts at the game…… and Karma is a bitch.  Which reminds me:  What do you call a movie about a kid attending Germantown High School?  “The Devil Knows Nada” (with apologies to Meryl Streep).

            We played a game at Germantown on Halloween one year.  I let the pep band wear Halloween costumes to the game.  A lady administrator at Germantown did not want to let us in, as we were not all dressed uniformly (paragraph 3, subsection F of the “How to Over-Administrate Handbook for Morons”).   At some point after we were seated, the same lady tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to my mellophone players (all girls), and said, “Those 5 will have to go!”.  It seems that they had dressed as pregnant nuns.  Now, I agree that is not the best costuming decision they could have made.  I would have gone with pregnant Red Devils.  The nice lady and I reached an agreement that involved the removal of strategically placed pillows (none of them were actually pregnant).  Should I have noticed this issue before we arrived?  Probably.  Was it in poor taste?  Absolutely.  Can you find a problem if you go looking hard enough?  I think you know the answer to that.  Which reminds me:  What do you say to a GHS graduate when they are wearing a 3-piece suit?  “Will the defendant please rise”.

           

            I started by saying I found all of this to be a little silly and I still do.  We need to support our schools while always remembering why we are at school in the first place (that education….. remember).  Have fun when and where you can, but maybe tone down the serious a bit.  There are obviously good things about both schools.  Heck! I was replaced by a GHS graduate in Mr. Taylor. which reminds me:  You know why GHS graduates are uniquely qualified to work at the DMV?  Because, as my preacher often says, “The Devil takes many forms.”