The End of the Marching Season

The marching season is over.
NO!
Yes, it's over.
NO!!
It. is. OVER!!!
NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, it is. Excuse me for being dramatic, but I'm quite sad about this small detail.

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This is really pretty much kind of how I feel. But I know that I have stuff to do, including but not limited to homework for A.P. Geography, squeaking out notes on my trumpet, banishing my fear of math, cleaning my room, and various other things. And since a high school freshman's homework scene can be pretty scary... well, let's just say that I have a lot to do. 

Anyway, homecoming was last Friday (September 25th) and it was super amazing. It was really, truly my first homecoming ever because I never went to the homecoming games at my old school. But the whole of last Friday was great. We wore our school colors (red and black!) and no one really payed attention to anything in school. The day crawled by but at long last my mom was driving me to pep band at 6:00. We warmed up in the band room and the game started at 7:00 and the 1st quarter flew by so fast that I hardly knew what was happening as the marching band filed out of the bleachers at second quarter to get into uniform and go through the field show once. It was dark and we really couldn't see anything but I could feel my band around me and... I don't know, I could kind of sense the life-of-band force that binds us all together. It was great. When we tuned in our sections I heard chords that were so powerful and uniform that they probably could have been heard all the way over on the football field. Once we had talked through the field show, our drum major called us in (meaning, gather around and listen up) and gave us a pep talk kind of thing- his very last- and led us out to the field. Now, this being a halftime show, we had to wait for the football team to come off and all of that, so we had some time to burn. I hope that some day, football will be played at halftime and the football players will have to wait for us to come off. 

My dad took pics and a video of it; here's one of the photos:

Yay band! P.S. None of these trumpet players are me, as I was on the other side of the field.

I thought we looked great under the field lights and seriously finished off the season with a bang! And after we were done and coming off the field our band director was like, "Good job, band! Now, get out of here!" So we did. Back at home after the game was done, I put away my marching shoes for the season, so at least I don't have to worry about practicing extra music. And though there won't be anymore marching until May, we have an EXTREMELY exciting opportunity as a band next year to think about in the meantime; more on this soon!

YAY BAND!!!

So you think your feet hurt???

My feet hurt. Somewhat. Mostly just from mild repeated shock. 
See, in addition to my life of band, I do irish dance (I just finished practicing b/c I must practice 9 hrs. a month at home). It's that stuff they do in Riverdance or Lord of the Dance or any of those Michael Flatley dance shows. Not only is it good exercise, I have lots of opportunities to injure myself. ; ) Not really, I've only done that once and it was around last year.
Dance has a lot to do with feet, actually, just like in marching band! Some of the only differences are that in dance we're always on our toes and that we start our dance steps with the right foot instead of the left. I'm proud to say that, thanks to all that fancy footwork in irish dance, I'm one of the top five marchers in the marching band. Mr. Hughes, one of our band directors, said so. I can actually do a backwards slide (that's how you march backwards in halftime shows) without dropping onto my heels! In dance, we're always on our toes, leaping through the air, making precision-sensitive rhythms with our feet, drilling moves that cause problems over and over and over again...
Now, on the subject of feet...
These are my marching shoes:

These are my dance shoes:

Which ones do you think would cause more foot pain?

WELL, I'll tell you. Your feet have not been in pain until you've broken in a pair of irish dance hard shoes! Those are the ones on the right that are akin to tap shoes. Something about the stiffness of the leather and the way they're shaped causes more and larger blisters than I've ever gotten from regular shoes in my life. These shoes need more breaking in than marching shoes for sure. Or maybe my feet are just pain-proof at this point, after 6 years of dance and 5+ pairs of these feet-killing shoes. 

And, take a look at these fiberglass taps:

If you hit an ankle with one of those, you're toast (just for about 3 minutes, but the idea is that it hurts a lot). I suppose you could fracture an ankle bone if you hit them hard enough, though. 

Anyway, a LOT of people complained about their marching shoes over the summer and how they had so many blisters and how their feet ached so much and all that, and I was just like, "Your feet haven't hurt YET! Try on these shoes and THEN your feet will hurt!" And I would shove a picture of my dance shoes under their noses. No one really said anything in response to that, but... yeah. Although I was mildly annoyed by my bandmates' complaining, I WILL make one exception, and that's for my flute-playing friend Emily (find her blog here). Her marching shoes literally rubbed a hole in her big toe because they just didn't fit the shape of her foot. By the end of the marching season she had to wear all-black Converse sneakers instead of her marching shoes, so I don't blame her for that, because who can control the shape of their feet?

In the end though, irish dance hard shoes are almost guaranteed to make your feet hurt more than marching shoes do.

The end. (Photos by me.) 

What's the point of Band, anyway?

To get good opportunities, for one...

Well, as I sit here trying to do homework about the scientific method, I was brainstorming what to tell you about band. And then the answer slid into my email inbox. 

Last night we had pep band at our home football game. The pep band plays encouragement songs for the team and the spectators. We have lots of fun. We scream and yell when our team scores and we talk and eat food and play louder than ever and when the game's finally done it's around 10 p.m. We all go home tired. I'm always glad that the home games are on Friday so we can sleep in the next day! But they're a lot of fun, these home games. We dance and eat and cheer and play fun music and grow closer as a band. I guess that's kind of weird, but sorry. A band must be close (and have music skills) to perform well because they must understand each other, and so they must be close. But I'm not saying that I know all the secrets of our high brass section. If I knew all of that I'd be disturbingly smart.
Anyways, my friend Danielle is in band with me. Several of our other friends are in it, too. Danielle is a cool person. She provides the comic relief when things aren't going great and cheers louder than most and is an all-around great band member. And yesterday she caught a cold, so she couldn't come to pep band. It was sad. Now, you might ask, what does this have to do with pep band? 

It has to do with the very meaning of school band itself. Read this:

I miss when the tubas would destroy small civilizations and the drums would hammer away and we would all dance.

Because that's what Pep Band is about.

Being a family...

AND BLOWING THE OPPOSING TEAM OFF THE BLEACHERS.

--Danielle, on the subject of pep band (check out her band-centered blog here.)

Pay attention to that second-to-last line. It's so important. That's the meaning of high school band, in the end. Not only are you learning how to make noise, you build memories so that when you think of high school, you don't remember how hard Chemistry and A.P. Calculus were. You remember how you and your friends looked forward to marching practice after school in the fall, and the marching field shows at homecoming, and how you used to dance to the music and cheer so loudly at pep band (and get your ears blasted out by the piccolos), and how you spent your summer marching at high noon in the summer heat, and the summer band camps and how you would come back on the first day of school and play your instrument better than everyone else because you practiced for hours a day over the summer. 

So, yeah. That's why I do band. Also I do it because it's fun. 

(Meaning: you should be in band, too!!!)

Marching Band...

...in other words, my entire summer life. For those of you that don't do it and hardly know if your school has one, here's my definition from my semi-dictionary (about a page and a half of exaggerated definitions):
Marching band- a.) a band that moves as one, in ranks (lines) of five or fewer (except the drum major, who sometimes marches backwards and conducts the music), and includes a wind section and a drum line. Each band can be defined by it's uniform, style, and director. There are high school marching bands, college marching bands, and professional marching bands. The 2 former take great pride in representing their schools when they perform.
b.) a popular entry in parades.
c.) an activity that school band students look forward to every summer.
d.) a group of people who are not allowed to like horses during parades because of the poop the horses are likely to leave behind on the route. (Marching bands do not like to get their leather marching shoes dirty.)
That last one's a bit extreme as we don't care too much, although it is a bother.
Marching band is a good way to occupy yourself during the summer. I had to make sure that I got to my high school at 8:00 (preferably a little before) every morning in June, for about 2 weeks in July, and most days in August. Also in August, we started learning our halftime show for homecoming. That was fun, except that we were out in the sun for 4 hours a day and I got quite sunburnt. But it was worth it in the end, so now we know for sure that we won't mess up at homecoming when the whole school's watching!
I REALLY want to go to a college with an amazing marching band. Duke in North Carolina would be nice. They have an amazing band that's quite well known; but that's an overly expensive private school. I don't have the money for that. I don't mind too much though, as sometimes in band we "devil up our hats", which refers to the way the Blue Devils marching band wears (or wore, I'm not exactly sure) their marching hats. They pull the brims way down so that no one can see their eyes, which sometimes does look better than having the brim more upwards. Where do the Blue Devils march? Mostly at their home football games. They do the halftime shows- see pictures here. In our band, we wear our hats so that you can fit 2 fingers between the brim and the bridge of your nose in parades. But coming back to school, my only requirements for now are:
A. that the school has a good band, and...
B. that the school has a good academic program.
I have yet to find somewhere that meets these criteria, but I'll find one, I'm sure.
But basically, marching band is a fun thing that gives us something to do over the summer. It's LOTS of fun!

The good old summer time- when marching band was the hardest thing.

My First Post!

Hmm, what should I say to start... oh well, I'll just go with the normal new blogger thing! Hello, readers! I'm glad you've found my blog. And I'm glad that I decided against blogging about Seabiscuit and Star Wars. That would have been immensely boring, though it was my plan in the first place. That whole idea was when I was completely and thoroughly obsessed with Star Wars and Seabiscuit. I kept thinking that those two things were the only ones on the planet to blog about. Are you interested in seeing my what my first post would have been if you had asked me about it six months ago? (I know, it’s really quite stupid…)

Seabiscuit + Star Wars = ???

The world’s second hardest equation

(the first hardest is one with no answer!)

Hello, readers. You’ve had the great chance to stumble upon this blog, and you may be doubting it’s worthiness already. (Or, if you used the Force to search the great Interwebs (internet) for Star Wars, then congratulations, you’ve found something that you’ll love, or at least find funny) I must sound like a Star Wars geek already. Which I am, and that’s why I’m blogging about this. All in the course of the past year, I read about Seabiscuit the great racehorse and watched Star Wars, which is now my personal favorite movie. The other day I came up with craziest idea: what if I combined Seabiscuit and Star Wars? Would it make something like Origami Yoda that can outsmart everyone? Or would it be a horse racing something-or-other that can use the Force? I’m not sure and I’m here to solve this second-hardest equation (even with a great fear of mathematics in general) So I will update you on my thoughts, discoveries, brainwaves, etc, etc. 

PS. If you’re already annoyed with this or don’t like Star Wars, PLEASE STOP READING NOW!!! Or else you’re in for a very vexing experience. I talk way too much about Star Wars for this to have any humorous value if you’re a Star Wars hater. (But actually, that means you can’t use the Force very well. Too bad for you!)

Now you can breath a sigh of relief that I’m not boring you with that. Luckily I've gotten over that Seabiscuit-Star Wars obsession now. So instead you get to read about...

You’ll hear about many of the things above and more, (marching band, seen in the upper center pic, is most important) and get my input on new movies, things (toys, perchance? Here are my favorite ones: Breyer and Lego) books, events, etc. I'll also be writing about band. My experiences in band. What we do in band. What happened last night at band. What we're doing tomorrow in band. What's happening next marching season. I’ll also tell you about why band is so amazing and how it works and all. There’ll be some non-band related posts in there so as not to bore you, but mostly it'll be about band. And so forth. Enjoy!