The view from the stands....

Some observations from tonight's band competition:

I'm sorry, but no matter how well they do it, seeing girls in harem outfits toss rifles just looks weird. "Look, a harem girl! And she's armed!"

Those drum major salutes are getting perilously close to resembling Arnold Rimmer's.

I see the vogue for dressing drum majors up in costume seems to have waned this year: only Indiana Jones showed up at the awards ceremony.

I was on the wrong side of the field, but I couldn't see how the pit* members were being dressed. Last year, at one competition, the pit walked onto the field wearing bi-color work shirts. The woman next to me looked at each other in confusion -- what were they, fast food workers? They looked like they belonged behind the counter at Arby's. Then the rest of the band came on, including the guard with checkered flags, and the announcer cheerfully declared they were doing a NASCAR-themed show, and it hit us: they were the "pit" crew. *groan* And then there was the pit that was dressed up like clowns. These guys don't get no respect, I tell ya.

They need to institute as rule saying that any given guard member can touch no more than four pieces of equipment during the show. It just gets excessive, guys. One band I saw had, I think, four sets of flags alone, not including rifles and sabers and other things.

There was a band which seemed to have a fire theme show followed by a band which had a tsunami theme show. Guess which show did better.

When the grand sweepstakes award trophy is over half as tall as the guard captain of the band that wins it, maybe it's time to reconsider the size of these things.

Ah, well. It was fun. Two weeks until the next one of these things.





*The pit is composed of all the pieces of percussion down front that don't march: chimes, gongs, xylophones, etc. Pit members [don't] march to the beat of their... oh, never mind.