Sunday, November 26, 2006

Next Victim Rip Van Winkle here. I'll quickly recap last weekend and move on to current events.  That was a very satisfying victory over UM.  It's hard to believe how many points were scored by both teams (81) against what were considered a couple of the top defenses in the country.  Well, I certainly don't want to have to play them again in the National championship game, and, with USC's win over ND, it looks likely we'll be trying to burst the Trojans'....bubble in January. The weekend at my brother's was relaxing and convivial.  I think it's remarkable that we end up seeing each other 3-4 times a year, living as far apart as we do, and that we've grown to like each other as we have.  The weather pitched in again this year - highs during the day were 65 - 70F, although it got very chilly at night.  For that, we had the fire pit, and some finely crafted beers from our Atlanta contingent. One sort of flawed strategy that could have doomed the entire day if the sports gods had been paying the least bit of attention: my youngest brother, 10 years my junior and a fellow OSU marching band alum, goaded me into bringing my trumpet down.  This wasn't a trivial request, since it meant schlepping it once again through the Seattle and Detroit airports (as I did in September to play in the alumni band game) as carry-on luggage, since I would be loath to check it as baggage.  On Saturday afternoon, leading up to game time, we dragged them out.  If you're strong of stomach, or deaf, here's a short film clip of our endeavor.  Please keep in mind that the moment captured here is literally the first time the horn has touched my lips since Labor Day weekend: Click any picture on the page to enlarge Click to play video (3 mb) Despite the inauspicious start, it was a great party.  We had 3 TVs hooked up to my brother's satellite dish, so that no matter which way you had to turn to either grab a beer or open one, you wouldn't miss any of the game action.  Even when it was causing looks of concern: With the game in hand, we got down to real business.  My Charleston brother and sister-in-law had significantly widened and improved the fire pit in his field, and we roasted 80 pounds of oysters and boiled/grilled lobsters that another guest had sent. These 3 seem to have been caught, Pompeii-like, in the midst of some Roman bit of dissolution: After dinner, we stoked the fire against the icy November tendrils of air Until not even our scintillating conversation could hold everyone's interest. Just so you don't think that all we did was drink beer, gorge ourselves on unfortunate shellfish, and watch football, we got out for several nice walks around my brother's 'hood, a mixture of farms and rural residences.  One disappointment down by my brother's pond was the no-show by his (now pet) largemouth bass, Shamu. Apparently the fish in his pond have entered a period of inactivity, and they didn't even surface when food pellets were scattered. As much as I love 'em, it's always good to get back home to Seattle.  I always try to sit on the right side of my Seattle-bound flights, just in case we make a "bad-weather" approach from the north, and I can get the "money shot" view of downtown and, every now and then, my neighborhood as we descend.  Reliably, for this time of year and especially for this wettest of Novembers, we turned for the airport just a couple miles north of the house.  Greenlake My 'hood Lake Union Downtown Seattle 2:31:56 AM    Speak to me! []

	Saturday, November 18, 2006

Tailgate Tails I'm at my brother's place in Charleston, SC - here with my brothers, their wives and my mom to again roast oysters and watch the Ohio State-Michigan game, something we seem to be making a tradition.  Here's my post on last year's meetup.  It seems the game has taken on mythical qualities this year, as OSU is ranked #1 and Michigan #2, and ESPN is flogging it 24/7.  Adding to the mix of hype and over-exposure was the death yesterday of former long-time Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, a day after he'd spoken to the team.  Bo and Woody Hayes were chiefly responsible for "branding" the rivalry, spending most of the 70s throwing lightning bolts back and forth at each other and devising all manner of psychological ploys to get their teams ready for the game.  Hayes used to slit the stitches on his baseball cap so that he could rip it to pieces at a strategic point in practice.  Against that backdrop, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bo has staged his passing, and they'll resurrect him in the locker room at halftime. The timing of Bo's death also couldn't have been worse for this Columbus punk-rock band called The Dead Schembechlers. They've been trading on an arch and clever parody of the animus of the rivalry, and had a major on-campus performance scheduled for Friday night.  They announced yesterday that it would be their last performance under that name, and they're donating the proceeds to a charity of the Schembechler family's choosing. Well, kickoff's only 5 hours away now, and I've got to get my game face on.  I'm sure I'll have some photos to share later. 7:00:25 AM    Speak to me! []

	Friday, October 13, 2006

Tales of the Mitten State It seems that contact with the University of Michigan football program just brings out the worst in people.  Wayne Woodrow Hayes, for instance, who would be skipping hand in hand with Mother Theresa through the Elysian fields of eternity were it not for a nationally-televised outburst or two in Ann Arbor.  (Well, that and that Clemson thing.)  It certainly brought out the worst in the architect who designed their stadium.  And then there's the sad case of former UM head coach Gary_Moeller, a good Ohio boy lured to the dark side, and his eventual destruction. I bring this up not simply because I have nothing worthwhile to say - two news items in the last 24 hours underscore yet again this unhappy affinity.  In the first, a fellow has been arrested in Ann Arbor for allegedly stalking coach Lloyd Carr and posting threatening emails.  The fact that the guy has never attended the university didn't immunize him from the curse.  The most chilling part of the story for me personally, however, was this: Akinmusuru was arraigned Thursday on charges of using a computer in a crime, malicious use of telecommunications and malicious annoyance by writing, campus police spokeswoman Diane Brown said. He faces up to one year in jail if convicted. (emphasis mine) I thought I was reasonably safe prattling away here as long as I avoided slandering or libeling anyone except people everyone hates anyway.  "malicious annoyance by writing" lowers the prosecutorial bar significantly.  You guys are all having a good time, right?  Can I pour you another drink or anything? The second episode involves the University of Wisconsin band, which is now on Double-Secret Probation for unspecified depravities on its bus ride home from Ann Arbor: The school is not releasing details on what happened during the trip to the Sept. 23 game. But Chancellor John Wiley described it in a letter to the band's director as behavior "that can be seen as anything from boorish and offensive to patently dangerous and unlawful."  Wiley warned in the letter he would consider suspending activities and travel of the band or replacing its leadership if there were more reports of "gratuitous vulgarity, sexualized banter or joking, hazing, or other forms of demeaning conduct." I may be just another old crock, but I'm shocked and dismayed to hear of this from an august fellow Big Ten musical institution.  When I was in the OSU band, our bus rides were used for studying, or writing letters to our mothers, or attending to our devotions.  In its more delusional moments, Wisconsin likes to think of itself as the Stanford of the corn belt.  Since the Stanford Band is blacklisted at more stadiums than Janet Jackson's breasts, the Badgers may be making concrete progress toward that goal. Let's hope this contagion doesn't extend westward on I-94 to East Lansing, where my Buckeyes will play the Spartans tomorrow. 7:53:39 AM    Speak to me! []

	Sunday, October 01, 2006

Ohiowa My Buckeyes played Iowa last night in Iowa City.  Night games on the road are a real horror-show for a visiting team, as the fans have had an extra 6 or 7 hours to tailgate beyond their normal kickoff, and the atmosphere is electric, loud.  Night games used to be the exclusive province of LSU and a few other southern schools, but ABC/ESPN has, belatedly, begun featuring a nationally-televised Saturday night game.  I think they had to await the passing of Lawrence Welk before the environment for ratings competition was favorable. For us on the west coast, inured to being jarred out of bed at 8:59 am for a 9:00 kickoff, the night kickoff is downright civilized.  Last night, for the first time, Mrs. Perils deigned - no, actually requested - to accompany me to the sports bar where OSU alumni gathered to watch the game.  Perhaps she wanted to see firsthand her competitor for my passion;  maybe she also wanted to ensure that it was only about the football. Since OSU won, it was a congenial, if raucous, experience.  Interspersed between plays, we had interesting conversations with our neighbors.  It took Mrs. Perils a quarter or more to get the hang of this.  Due to my long experience, I have an internal clock that somehow knows when the ball is about to be snapped, and I adapt the diction of my conversation so that I can apply a period to a sentence just in time to turn to the TV and watch the play.  My interlocutors in these environs are similarly endowed, and respect and appreciate my reciprocation.  Mrs. Perils, on the other hand, could have been flagged several times for compound-sentence violations extending through the snap.  Our neighbors were very courteous, however, and applied the advanced technique of pretending to follow a conversation, even feigning eye contact, while actually being totally engrossed in the play on the television.  The fortuitous placement of TV screens in every possible sight line in this sports bar greatly facilited this ruse. One fellow we talked to graduated from OSU a year after I did, in accounting, no less.  We compared notes about a couple of common professors and the highlights - highly expurgated in my case - of our careers.  He had first worked for, then purchased a franchise of, a farm implements manufacturer, sold it, and seemed to be simply at loose ends.  He had flown to Seattle the previous week from a midwestern city in order to interview outfitters for a prospective Kilimanjaro climb.  This was sufficient entree for a substantive conversation with Mrs. Perils. Another fellow next to us I'd seen at these gatherings before.  He'd alway seemed sort of terse, wrapped pretty tight and not very tolerant of errant play by the Buckeyes.  Here's someone, your biases tell you, whose personal and professional life is a shambles and who places all of his need for personal affirmation on the backs of a sports team.  Well, under cross-examination by Mrs. Perils, it turns out he has a PhD from OSU in something like solid state engineering, and works for a large local software company not known to suffer fools. Fine.  I'll always have the '71 Rose Bowl.  Oh, wait, we lost that one. As the game wound down and OSU was busy killing the prisoners, the TV cameras flitted around the stadium focusing on the glum faces of the Iowa students.  Each time the camera would alight on a crestfallen, Hawkeye-imprinted visage, the whole room in loud unison would say, "AWWWWWWWW!"  While this was amusing, I turned to a guy next to me and said, "Well, when time runs out, those kids will still be 19 and screwing their brains out.", a point no one could argue. Later, after we'd gotten home, I was surprised (and maybe she was, too) to hear that Mrs. Perils was a little hoarse.  Like maybe she'd been cheering.  A good night's progress for our football agnostic. 11:26:26 AM    Speak to me! []

	Monday, September 25, 2006

We Survive Another Week On Saturday, my Buckeyes played Penn State, a worthy opponent and one of the "big" games of the year. I decided I wanted company in either my misery or ecstasy, so I bussed down to the sports bar near the Seattle Center where our alumni club was meeting to view the game. While I'd stop short of calling our particular distemper a "religion", I'll note that the following two photos are the closest I've come to viewing stained glass from the inside in several decades. Click any photo to enlarge You might think these guys are taking afternoon tea, handicapping the candidates for the Man Booker prize, except... OSU sealed its victory in a tough contest with two interception returns for touchdowns in the fourth quarter.  The following video was made during the celebration after the second of these: OSU Fans Celebrate Interception vs. Penn State - Click to play (2.9 mb) Also in the room, and in some places at the next table, were members of the Penn State alumni club. Remarkably, there was no woofing or trash talk between the groups (although plenty of vociferous cheering). Below, their fans break camp as, onscreen, their young quarterback wanders disconsolately to the locker room after the game. On to Iowa City for a prime-time night game this Saturday. 12:41:03 AM    Speak to me! []

	Tuesday, September 05, 2006

OSU Band Reunion Last weekend flew by, and I hardly spent any time online. I see that certain criminal elements failed to heed my offer of amnesty, and that summer is still missing and about to grace milk bottles coast to coast. I'm in the midst of a whacked-out travel itinerary that, after flying home to Seattle from Detroit yesterday (Monday) afternoon, now has me on a morning flight today (Tuesday) back to Milwaukee for a mixture of work, a board meeting and (gulp) golf.  More about that in another post.  I had made my reservation for the band reunion quite a while ago.  Then my client scheduled a board meeting this week, and changing my original itinerary to SEA-DTW-MKE-SEA was just about the same cost as the two round trips I'm embarked on now and, to tell the truth, I was happy for the evening home even though it means more flight time.  Also on the plus side, I get a couple thousand more miles toward 2007 elite status should Northwest Airlines survive. The band reunion was a bit hectic, as usual, but once again a lot of fun.  To recap for the handful of you who aren't my relatives, parole officers or court-appointed psychological evaluators, I was in the marching band when I attended Ohio State, and thus am allowed to participate in the alumni band reunion held each year at an early-season football game.  Between 600 and 700 of us attend this event each year to renew acquaintances, and to play and march in both the pregame and halftime shows.  In order to present a show that we won't be ashamed of, we are very busy Friday night and Saturday morning rehearsing. Friday night, we have a sit-down music rehearsal where we play through all the show music and review our formation charts.  It's interesting how quickly we start sounding reasonably good.  It helps that there's a core group in Columbus that plays together all year.  (But don't you have to wonder at a local culture that wants fight songs played at weddings and funerals?)  Here are a couple of videos from the rehearsal: Buckeye Battle Cry Click to play (5.3 mb) Carmen Ohio Click to play (6.0 mb) Saturday morning, we have to be in our seats for a final census about 7 hours before kickoff.  This kills us on days when we have the usual 12:30 kickoff, as that translates to a 5 am start time.  This year, however, ABC made our game a 3:30 pm regional telecast, so we got a reprieve to 8 am.  That's still early, considering that we've usually stayed out late Friday night catching up with each other.  The Saturday schedule is as follows: Music rehearsal 8 am - 10:30 Outside for marching/playing rehearsal until 12:30 Quick lunch, then assemble in St. John Arena, the old basketball venue, for Skull Session, an open-to-the-public dress rehearsal at 1:30 Form up & head to the stadium for the pregame show. You can get an idea of the range of ages at the reunion from the photo below, taken at our outdoor rehearsal.  Just from my personal perspective, there were no women in the band when I was in it.  And, with regard to the fellow pictured, there's a haunting, understated eloquence in the "42, 46-48" on his jacket, and all that is implied in the caesura of that comma: Click any photo to enlarge While the alumni band members straggle and saunter from the end of one run-through to the next, the student band arrives for its rehearsal with us in style: Click to play (8.5 mb) Two very dramatic moments occur during the Skull Session rehearsal/performance. One is a fairly recent addition to the ritual. In an attempt to acquaint the players with the myriad components of what makes a football Saturday at Ohio Stadium, Jim Tressel has been walking the team through the Skull Session and having one of the captains give a short speech. The arena is always full, and the crowd always appreciative. The second is when the varsity band enters the arena to an up-tempo cadence. Since the crowd is laden with band parents, siblings and SOs, the response is deafening: Team Entrance Click to play (8.8 mb) OSUMB Entrance Click to play (7.2 mb) Somewhere in this sea of red, we're supposed to form up and march to the stadium. After our pregame show, we had to wait on the sidelines for the flagraising and the playing of the national anthem.  During the anthem, I noticed this group of women doing some arcane dance routine.  I asked one of my bandmates what they were doing, and he said, "They're doing signing.  For the deaf...and for the dumb (referring to me)." The following series of pics were taken by someone (thanks, Mark!) sitting in the stands.  I picked out the photos that had me in them, and you can follow the arrows to find me. Damn!  We've got "diagonals"!  That means our vertical and horizontal spacing is spot-on. Gotta love that halftime score! 8:48:32 AM    Speak to me! []

	Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Bowl Job Happy New Year!  Welcome to two thousand and sick. New Year's has alway seemed like a superfluity to me.  I suppose you need it to form the the outer border of the holiday week, but by the time the actual day comes, you sort of wish you could put it in the bank for sometime when there's better weather.  Especially given the odds of your not feeling very well that day. This year, then, should have seemed even more over-the-top, with the official holiday coming on the January 2nd.  Usually, you can assuage your various New Year's Day maladies with comfort foods and bowl games, but this year there were no bowl games on New Year's Day to serve as a Cotton-y/Rosey/Fiesta-ive/Sugary/Orangular (it's a word, shut up) cushion on Sunday.  Fine.  The gym was closed all day anyway, so I didn't have to embarrass myself there.  We just took a long walk for some marginally-needed items, and awaited Monday. Because Monday was Bowl Game Day.  I started nipping at the bowl game bottle early, as we do here on the west coast when there are interesting games in the eastern time zone.  My plan was to check out the inconsequential games emanating from north Florida - the ones that seem like they should be a tropical vacation but, since they're played in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, are most often chilly teases with mushy fields to play on.  If you're keeping score at home, you'll know I would be pointing all day to the Fiesta Bowl contest between Notre Dame and my Buckeyes. I had received an email from the Seattle cell of the nefarious al-Buqai organization that we would be meeting at a sports bar next to the Space Needle, hoping for an explosive crowd for a 5:00 pm kickoff.  My plan was to get a good buzz on from the morning games, go running with a gym workout in the early afternoon, then clean up and head for the sports bar for the evening orgy, two rust belt teams duking it out in the Sonoran desert. As I was watching the early games, the annoying subscript banners that they fling onto the screen to cater to the ADD population that comprises the bulk of thier audience kept saying that the Fiesta Bowl kickoff would be at 4:30 Eastern, 1:30 Pacific.  My presumption was that my guy was right, and the network that would be broadcasting the game was laughably wrong, so I sat and sipped coffee, getting up the energy to head for the gym. Then, at about 1:00 they showed a live feed from Tempe of the OSU and Notre Dame players going through their warmups, and I started to panic.  I went online and discovered that, indeed, I had only 20 minutes to get to the bar for kickoff.  I quickly shaved, dressed, and rummaged through my closet for OSU gear.  I came up with my wool marching band jacket, and headed for the car. The game started badly, with Notre Dame taking the opening kickoff and scoring in less than 3 minutes.  At that point we realized that we were sharing the sports bar with an equally large and vocal Domer contingent.  As the ND guy scored, someone in their crowd pulled up a trumpet and started blasting their godawful fight song.  I thought, "this is going to be an awfully long night if they can score at will, and this guy has any chops at all". As it turned out, though, his mouthpiece would stay dry well into the third quarter, as we dominated the game.  I tried, at one point, to venture over to their side of the bar to photograph the musician, but he wouldn't reveal himself, and someone gently but firmly made it clear that I should quickly return to the OSU side of the venue.  The outcome was extremely satisfying, as I had garnered a couple of bets from my business contacts in the upper midwest, where Catholic Notre Dame fans run as thick and spearworthy as salmon used to run in the Columbia River. The win also would seem to give me the latitude to watch the final two bowl games, Penn State vs Florida State in the Orange Bowl and Texas vs USC in the Rose, with a patronizing sense of detachment and noblesse oblige. However.  I revere the Rose Bowl, and love the bowl system.  The folks who whine every year that college football should have a basketball-style playoff have never been around college football long enough to develop a sense for what makes it appealing.  In the bowl system, those whose fall social schedule revolves around attending games and supporting their teams get to plan vacation trips 3-4 weeks ahead of the event, and head for some sunbelt city (except for the inexplicably-sanctioned Motor City, Liberty, and whatever that joke they play in Boise is called -bowls) to have a good time.  They spend up to a week at the game venue partying and discovering a city that's probably outside their normal purview, and, once the games are played, half the teams come home winners.  The teams and bands and students also get an off-campus experience to savor through the bleak winter quarter.  If that kind of thing appeals to you in the first place. If there were a playoff, few traditional fans, and fewer students, would attend the 3 - 4 week marathon of games, and all but one team would suffer year-long frustration.  Who would this benefit besides corporate sponsors and long-distance observers with no connection to a particular team and tradition, or the game itself? Which brings us to tonight's Rose Bowl.  Well, it's only half a Rose Bowl, because only one of the participants comes from the PAC-10/Big 10 traditional pairing.  I feel it's a desecration of hallowed ground for a Texas or Oklahoma to set foot in the Arroyo Seco, to insinuate their fly-over apostasy into Olympian real estate.  And the ultimate indiscretion to win the damn game, as Texas has the last two years. Here's a link to better days, where you can hear a recording of my OSU marching band in the 1971 Rose Parade and the Doppler effect of my 21-year-old self crossing over from my childhood to ... a childish arrested adulthood, for these last couple of days, anyway. 9:41:19 PM    Speak to me! []

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