The Ties That Bind

(to follow The November Rain)

So there you have it. There are some interesting ties between my final performance senior year, and my last game in Michigan Stadium, exactly four years later. On the surface, this parallel may seem painfully depressing, but I assure you that it's not. We learn the most from moments of adversity, as they teach us to appreciate things more important than a win, or a first-place trophy. This loss taught me that success can be measured in more profound ways, such as through unswerving dedication, or by overcoming failures, or forging a lasting bond with your peers.

While exiting the basketball arena at my last competition, I thought about my friendships that had endured over the past four years. I remembered the moments just before our performance, when each senior stood up and reflected their thoughts on their marching band experience. Each one implored the younger musicians to make the most of their four-year endeavor, because it would go by faster than they think. We urged them to maintain focus, not on the glory of a win, but on their development as musicians, as leaders, and as friends.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what separated me and my peers from the 'Gregs' of the world - those that were far too willing to sacrifice what was truly important, all for selfish fame or personal recognition. For us, our persistence, our teamwork, and our appreciation...those were the ties that bound us together as a group, and the values that would make us stronger individuals for the rest of our lives. The finale may not have been perfect, but maybe the end just isn't as important as the means. After all, "it's not the end result that matters. What matters is the journey you take to get there." One thing is for sure: we always made sure to have fun whenever we could.

And so, after marching season was over, we did what many groups of friends have done when they just want to have some fun. That's right. We went to Prague...

The November Rain (and Armpit Stains)

(to follow The Dream, Blast!ed)

November 17, 2003.

I ascended the uncomfortably narrow aisle to the upper levels of the overcrowded gym. As I looked up the stairs, I could see the cold rain pounding on the window in the distance. It never rains in November. Why did it have to rain today? The sound of the downpour was just a depressing reminder of the sour note on which this season was apparently going to end. Not exactly the end I had hoped.

I turned around in the aisle and glanced down upon 160 of my fellow high school musicians who stood looking at me with their overwhelmed looks. The judges announced that they were ready, and I gave my usual drum major salute. Oddly, a man to my right was particularly impressed, and idiotically shouted at me: "Whoh! There's a lot that's gonna be goin' on right here, isn't there?"

The hell? I was slightly amused, and for a second I forgot the rain. I was about to conduct my last field show, albeit at a rained-out field competition. Right then was probably not the best time for him to be chit-chatting. I shrugged it off, and raised my arms to begin conducting. As I did so, I felt a soreness in my left elbow. Maybe my friend Ben, a fellow senior and trombone section leader, noticed my slight discomfort, because I thought I saw him crack a smile at me from down on the gym floor. A few hours before, he and the other senior guys had given me a rather painful group hug in the parking lot, babbling, "We love you, Paul!", "You're an awesome drum major," et cetera.

I sucked it up, called the band to attention, and began conducting my last show. My swan song. My last performance as the Drum Major of the LCHS Marching Band...



And Flashback: Four Months Earlier.

The whole Band Council was cramped in Amanda's pool house amidst the arid August heat. She was talking about something Band President-related. The rest of the council just stared on, perhaps listening to what she was saying, but most likely once again focused on her notoriously large breas-...uhh, pool house. Yup, her large pool house. It was very well...developed. Maybe even Double Developed.

My mind was elsewhere. Across the room, I noticed Ben, the trombone section leader, scowling at me. I tried to ignore it, but his glare was intense, as if he would stand up at any minute and punch me in the face. Clearly, he didn't like me at the moment, and incorrectly thought I had sold out Virgile, the previous drum major. I had a lot of damage control to do.

We just finished discussing the theme of the show: "The Seven Seas," featuring music by Joseph Curiale. Both Mrs. Hamre and I were relieved to have a new marching instructor, particularly because he wasn't Greg, which already made him an improvement by default. The new guy's name was Mike Freed, and he was a marching instructor at Thousand Oaks High School. I had friends in their band, and I knew they had a strong program, so I was optimistic about the season. Except for the whole part about everyone hating me. Yeah, that sucked.

On the first day of our band camp, I had a discussion with Mike Freed about our plan for teaching marching. It was all very...awkward. In a lot of ways, Mike was the anti-Greg. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing, either. Despite all of Greg's problems, he was extremely charismatic. Mike quite possibly had the intellectual and social capacity of an 8 year-old. "Dork" would be a huge understatement. He was always dirty, spit when he talked, and frequently had snot dripping out from his nose.

I told him that I thought we should spend the entire first week focusing on marching fundamentals, because that was always our weakness. We shouldn't worry about learning the show until the second week, when we would have a good foundation to build off of. Mike disagreed, and explained why. It was something to do with the way Thousand Oaks High School does things, and how wonderful they are, and how he has been teaching for years blah blah blah...but alas, let's remind ourselves that I was just a 16-year old boy during all this. I didn't really have the focus or the patience for his flawed reasoning. Plus, he always did this thing where he talked a lot with his arms, allowing everyone to see his massive yellow armpit stains flapping around. And these were not small stains. They seemed to spread all the way down the sides and back of his shirt. I actually made sure to stand 2 feet away at all times, out of fear that his yellowed stains would somehow spread onto MY clothes. Meanwhile, during this whole discussion, Mike had some assistant guy next to him, contributing nothing to the conversation besides an occasional head nod. To this day, I don't know who or what this assistant was. I guess he was a little man, shorter than me (which is saying something). I never heard him say a word, and after a few days, he simply...disappeared. It's possible he got caught up in an epic Dungeons and Dragons game and is actually still playing it right now.

After our conversation, Captain Pitstain and his pet hobbit walked off together to chat. I heard Captain Pitstain mumbling to his little friend/pet, "This kid is a typical drum major. He thinks he knows what's best. He's in over his head, blah blah blah...," as they trailed off. I'm surprised I'm not permanently blind after rolling my eyes so much that day.

Maybe that's when I realized it. There was a reason we could never seem to get a really good marching instructor. They simply don't exist. Anyone that's talented enough to be good at teaching it would surely have at least a slightly better career. We were always going to be stuck with either an jerk, or a level-5 dungeonmaster with a homemade Agility+2 broad sword.

For the next week, the section leaders and I taught most of the marching fundamentals on our own. Slowly, their resentful glares toward me began to soften a bit. Nobody really listened to Admiral Armpit for the rest of the season, and he gradually became irrelevant. I'm a little grateful for it, because his incompetence may have been one of the reasons the angry section leaders actually accepted my leadership.

Late one evening toward the end of Band Camp, all of the seniors gathered in an empty hallway in our dorm. We joked about Uncle Underarms and his little friend, who had strangely, but most appreciatively, vanished. My senior class was much different than the seniors from the year before. While the last class was a large, accomplished group, we were much smaller and far less musically gifted. The advantage of a small class, though, was that we were all very close. We were basically 15 immature boys, and Amanda was the one girl who somehow was able to get what she wanted out of us. It was strange...she seemed to possess, some sort of feature, perhaps, that always drew our attention. Anyway, after a while, the conversation drifted toward Greg, and Virgile, and what had happened at the beginning of the summer. Richie, the baritone section leader, turned to me and asked, "Yeah, Paul. So, why did you rat out Virgile?"

Suddenly, the scowling returned. It seemed that they all wanted answers. With all of them together, it was my opportunity to clear up the truth once and for all. When I described the series of unfortunate events that led to my ostricization, then explained that it wasn't me who sold Virgile out, and that it was all a colossal misunderstanding, they believed me. "Yeah, I didn't think you would ever do something like that," Richie added at the end. It was a huge relief. Like going to the bathroom after Thanksgiving dinner. Or like...finishing a nonstop 48-hour hike up a steep mountain, and finally going to the bathroom for the first time in two days. Or like... spending a really, really long time explaining to your friends why you're not a narc, and then going to the bathroom.

A few days later, I had one of my biggest setbacks of the year. After band camp, the whole band travels back home to perform everything we've learned so far for our parents. After working nonstop for two weeks, I was severely exhausted at this point. All I had to do was conduct one show, and then I could go home and sleep for two or three days. However, when we arrived at the football field, there were no yard lines. Marching on a field WITH lines is hard enough as it is. A performance without lines....well....let's just say I contemplated changing the show theme to "The Village Idiots' Convention: Presented by the La Canada School for the Blind."

I worked up and down the field, using whatever I could find as yard markers. When it was time to perform, I climbed the podium as the band members marched onto the field. Several chunks of the band were at least 5 yards off from their correct spots. Everyone looked confused. My makeshift show theme was sounding more and more attractive.

I readied myself to conduct the show. A few seconds after I began, I realized that I started the piece at least 20 beats per minute too slow. I tried to speed it up, but only a few people were looking up at me, while others were frantically searching the unlabeled field for their spots. Soon, there were two tempos going. Then even more. I looked to my left, and Professor Perspiration was waving his arms trying to get some poor freshman clarinet player to move over, his stained shirt billowing like a giant yellow surrender flag. Maybe our "Seven Seas" theme was actually appropriate here. I could see him sweating profusely from where I stood conducting, like a ship taking on water. We miraculously managed to finish the show. Mike Freed's shirt was now repulsively transparent. Apparently, our ship had sunk.

Afterwards, I walked down from the podium, probably ready to vomit at any moment. Mrs. Hamre intercepted me on the way to the nearest garbage can. She was trying to make me feel better: "Wow, Paul. You really lost it. But, believe me, I've seen much worse at these things." I didn't feel better. I felt demoralized. Some of the seniors came up to me and tried to cheer me up. After some time, we were all joking about the countless mistakes we had all made during the show. Man, we had a lot of work to do. Good thing November was over two months away.



And, Fast Forward!!! By November, our group of seniors had clicked amazingly well. No, we weren't perfect, but we managed to accomplish a lot while having fun, a feat that last year's class was unable to complete. We had our second to last competition at the Hart Rampage Tournament in early November. We even won 1st Place in our division!!! Out of One! Regardless of that fact, our show had improved significantly since the disaster after band camp. Now, we had one more competition left. I would be the last regular competition of my high school career. If we scored high enough, though, we would qualify for Championships.

Since we had finished learning all the moves in the show, we were essentially just cleaning things and making tweaks to boost our music and general effect scores. During the week of our last competition, Mrs. Hamre was called in for jury duty and placed on a case. She knew that there was a lot of accomplish, and she couldn't trust a substitute teacher to teach marching band adequately, so she asked me to take over the classes. The problem was that there were two periods of band, and I was only in one of them. For the other class, I was supposed to be in AP Physics. It was probably a mistake on my part, but I ended up missing physics one day to go teach marching band. I didn't think Mrs. Waters really cared, because she seemed sadly aware of the fact that she was a horrible physics teacher. I could never understand what she was saying through her thick Scottish twang anyway.

So, I went to teach marching band. I took advantage of this time to work on some musical issues that had been bothering me, and add some stylistic elements to the show. We actually got a lot done, and it would certainly help boost our scores at the final competition.

It didn't take long before I was called into the Attendance Office for "ditching class." I was probably unjustifiably frustrated by this, because I was clearly guilty, but I couldn't help but resent the fact that I was being reprimanded for missing one class to go TEACH another class, while my friends were cutting school to go to the beach, or go out to eat, or simply to take a nap. I needed Mrs. Waters' signature to clear my name, and I explained to her my situation. She gave me her usual sarcastic look and said, "Wull now Paul, yeh shunt be dun thiz so' ouf Bit 'snut guh fo' yo' recor un' Bit an' yo' sho' know thiz Bit fo' th'exam bit in may an' yo' prolly gun' geh oul tho' attendance hoffice folk righ' up mental wud me an' ah dun need tha' Bit righ' now."

See, her lips were moving, but everything just sounded like "Bit Bit BIT BIT BIT." I just sort of stood confused, and then innocently handed her the paper, hoping that she had agreed to sign it at some point during her incoherent babbling. Then she leered at me and said something like, "Was thiz bit? Ah bit the bit bit bit bit." I had no idea if she was even speaking English at this point, and then reached out further with my attendance office slip. She snatched it, angrily piercing me with her eyes, sighed, and spoke to me with a punishing tone, "You should come to class, Paul." Yeah, I understood that last bit.


By the day of the last competition, I felt very confident. Our show was much better, and everyone was really eager to perform. As we loaded the buses, I could feel the excitement from the students around me. And in just a few hours, they would be able to show that audience just how hard they had worked since the last competition.

Then the rain came...pounding against the bus windows on our way to Moorpark College. I began to worry. I had heard about competitions being rained out in the past, and then subsequently moved indoors for a standstill performance. According to the rules, scores given at rained-out competitions could not be used to qualify for Championships. We would be out of the running by default.

After we pulled into the parking lot at Moorpark College, I dashed over to one of the other buses to ask Mrs. Hamre what was going on. She told me exactly what I couldn't bear to hear. The competition was rained out. We would play a standstill performance in the basketball arena. Our Championship dreams were effectively quashed.

Before I could walk back to the other buses to inform my fellow band members of the sad news, the seniors walked out into the rain to ask me what was going on. I explained our situation, and they responded with disappointed and despondent looks.

"So all our work over the past two weeks was a waste?," one of them asked. I just shrugged. Finally, one of the section leaders spoke up and said, "Well, nothing we can do now. This is our last competition. Let's make it fun." Then they all started hooting and shouting and jumping around me saying, "WE LOVE YOU PAUL" like a drunken mob. I felt an arm bash into my left elbow, but I didn't care. I started laughing, and maniacally so, after one of them started tickling me. My friends knew I was exceptionally ticklish, and they all joined in. I laughed uncontrollably until I fell to the ground, clutching my elbow and practically having an asthma attack. Ha...I could barely breathe. It hurt so good.

The evanescent cheer ended when I returned to each bus to tell the marching band members the unfortunate news. Some were confused, but most just looked on, disappointed. They begrudgingly grabbed their instruments, and walked into a nearby practice hall. Since there was no need to go over much of the marching or visual effects, we had a lot of down time. There was a chance for the seniors to speak to everyone and share their thoughts, but I'll touch on this later. After some time, we picked up our instruments, and marched toward the basketball arena.

During the march to the gym, everything began to hit me. I had pictured how this day would turn out for a while now. I envisioned us performing the best show of my four years, blowing the audience away, beating our rivals to take the first place trophy during the awards ceremony, celebrating as a band after the joyous result, and then heading home satisfied with the season and with a ticket punched to Championships. I figured that had to be the natural result of four years of hard work, dedication, obstacles, and frustration. All of the anxiety and sleepless nights caused by Greg had to be for something. We earned the glory. How could I expect anything less?

As I walked up the basketball arena risers to take my place as conductor, I thought longingly of the ideal end - that grand finale that I had wanted for so long. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel, now that my dream and reality were officially and irreconcilably different. I raised my arms and began conducting my last show. I may have even teared up slightly during our rendition of "I Have a Love," our beautiful ballad. After the final note, I bowed for the judges, the audience, and my 160 peers on the gym floor. I stepped down and led the way as they followed me one last time off our stage, out from under the glow of the flourescent lights, and into the rainy November night.

The Dream, Blast!ed

(to follow The Stock Market Cymbals)

Putting my junior year into words is not going to be an easy task. Unfortunately, compared to my last post, this one is probably going to be more of a downer.......

It was requested from me that I remove this post. If you would like to access it, please email me.

The Stock Market Cymbals

(to follow The Tears and the Years)

While I sit, anxiously waiting to get blown out by the Gators in the Capital One Bowl, I think I'll recap the highlights of my marching band experience over the past eight years. Let me begin with my sophomore year in high school, when I was a member of the La Canada High School Winter Drumline. I was one of four kids on the cymbal line, and we performed and competed in the Southern California Percussion Alliance. The theme of our show was actually really cool. It was entitled "18 Wall Street", and portrayed the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Now that I'm looking at the name again, I don't think the New York Stock Exchange is even located on 18 Wall Street. Let's see here...Yes. I'm right. Wikipedia is telling me that the address was 18 Broad Street in 1929. Interesting how no one thought any of this at the time. Whatevskis!

Here was the makeup of the battery section of our Drumline:

Snares (3): Mike, Peter, Robby

Tenors (2): Dan Dawg, Johnny

Basses (5): Evan, Vijay, Scott (aka my brother, aka Cow), Alex, David

Cymbals (4): Virgile, Kevin, Amanda, and Me

I spent the majority of my time with my fellow cymbal players. I guess we each had our own...uhhh...talents. Virgile, a junior, was probably the best musician out of all of us. But Kevin, a sophomore, was probably the best at actually playing cymbals. Amanda, also a sophomore, had very large breasts, which were particularly conducive to muffling the sound of the cymbal crash. That leaves me, and I'm struggling to figure out my talent here. I guess I was able to hold the cymbals up longer than everyone else. That's...something. On the whole, though, I would say that our combined musical skills fell somewhere in between mediocre and blithely ignorant.

Most of the people reading this probably don't have a lot of experience playing cymbals. Let me describe the basics: First off, and I don't mean to offend any cymbal players, as I feel that after playing cymbals for three years I can say this...but cymbals are pretty much the least musical instrument EVER. It really doesn't require much skill. Yes, there are over a hundred ways to crash a cymbal, but there are also over a hundred ways to destroy my apartment, and my hamster perfected 78 of them.

One of my favorite parts of cymbal-ing is when you accidentally crash it too close to your body, and you'd pinch your skin between the cymbals. Sometimes we would be standing and practicing and the person next to me would pinch himself, and then scream from the searing pain, and fall to the ground. It was hilarious/horribly, horribly painful. By the end of the season, I'm sure all four of us were pinched and bruised all over our arms and chests, and the marks took months to disappear. The cymbals were also good at completely disabling nearly all of our hand capabilities. It was frustrating to be unable to scratch my nose without bashing a huge piece of metal into my forehead...or answer my cell phone...or plant a garden...or aim into the toilet.

So, back to "18 Wall Street." Looking back, I think that none of us really realized exactly how good we were. In fact, apparently by the end of the season, we were REALLY good, yet, always and forever - blissfully ignorant. The climax of the Winter Drumline season came at the SCPA Championships at Cal State University San Bernadino. We met before dawn on a Saturday morning at LCHS to pack the equipment into the truck. Then we loaded the bus and drove 2 hours to CSUSB. Just like every other drumline competition, we unfolded the drumline floor, and spent a few hours practicing and running through the show. Folding the floor back up was always a huge hassle that no one wanted to do. In order to do a good job, it required about 20 people folding at once. Once folded, the floor weighed over 150 lbs and had to be pushed around on a cart. After we finished, we lugged ourselves and our despised floor to the basketball arena to perform our show for the judges.

Here's how this works: Before a drumline starts performing, the floor needs to be unrolled, then the pit equipment needs to be moved on top of it, then come all of the props, and then we need to pick up our instruments and get into position...all in about a minute. It's unbelievably hectic, and once we're finally ready to perform, we're already out of breath. After setting up, we performed our stock market crash-themed show, and quickly and frantically removed everything off of the floor. Plus, since we don't have enough time to nicely fold the floor, we just quickly rolled it up into a long mess. About 20 of us stood in a line alongside the floor, picked it up, and sprinted with it out of the gym. Once we were outside, we left it in one big heap in the rain.

At this point, we were ready to eat lunch, and go home. We knew we wouldn't have to worry about performing in the finals, and we didn't really want to stay to watch the evening performances. Several thoughts involving burning the Floor were also floating around. As we were eating, Mark, our instructor, walked up and told us to get our instruments and start practicing. We all stood confused, which may not have actually phased Mark, because we were perpetually confused about everything for five months now. Apparently we had placed second at prelims - well over the qualifying mark for finals. Our shock transitioned quickly to excitement, and back to shock again, after someone shouted, "Oh, crap! The Floor!"

No, we didn't burn it. But it was lying in the rain and dirt, completely drenched. After practicing for an hour or so, and after the rain subsided, we set out to cleaning the Floor. Alas, our resources were extremely limited, both in terms of cleaning supplies, and mental competence. Most of us got on our hands and knees and started rubbing it down with paper towels. The parents helped out, too...and I even remember Mrs. Hamre wiping the Floor down.

You may have also noticed that I started capitalizing "Floor". Halfway through this entry, I realized what a significant impact this particular floor has had ON MY LIFE. Surely significant enough to warrant a capital letter. If "The Depression" gets to be capitalized, then "The Floor" deserves it, too. Perhaps even italicized. And underlined twice. And sandwiched in between several crying and angry-faced emoticons.

Anyway, back to cleaning :-( !!The Floor!! )-: . We honestly weren't sure if it was even working. It was already dark, and there was no outside lighting. Some of the drummers thought it would help to spread out the pit covers over The Floor while Elena and Andrew, two very very small freshman pit members, sat on the covers so we could drag them across The Floor, hopefully absorbing some of the moisture. After dragging the freshmen back and forth across it several dozen times, and after running out of paper towel reserves, we stood in the pitch black staring at the barely visible Floor, and proclaimed it clean.

At this point, my nerves were catching up with me. Since we didn't ever think we were good, there was never that much pressure on us during our performances. Suddenly, we had the opportunity to place at championships! We had the opportunity to beat Arcadia High School, one of our rivals. We focused ourselves, marched our equipment back over to the gym, and waited for our turn to take the stage. Typically, we would stand in a circle, pray and hope for a good show before all of our competitions. This time, everything mattered so much more. After we wished each other luck, we stood waiting to ready the gym. Just like always, we sprinted on, unfolded The Floor, set up the props, positioned the pit equipment, picked up our instruments, and waited for the judges to tell us when to start.

As I reached for my cymbals, I distinctly remember Peter next to me saying, "Oh.....Shit!" He was staring at The Floor, his jaw dropped. I looked at The Floor in shock. It was completely covered in a clearly visible and thick layer of dirt and sopping wet filth. Obviously, there was nothing we could do at this point. Hopefully it wouldn't really affect our performance. After the judges' "go", we started. From the get-go, I noticed some of the drummers having trouble maintaining their traction on the slippery floor. Each step prompted a squishy sound and seemed to flick water in every direction. I specifically remember nearly face-planting on a touch-and-go early in the show, and then later helping Rachel up when she slipped behind a prop.

By the end of the show, we seemed to get the hang of the slippery surface, and finished a strong performance. Once again, we quickly cleared The Floor, picked it up, and ran out the door. This time, we had absolutely no qualms about leaving The Floor outside in a wet, disgusting, unholy heap. Several drumline members even attacked The Floor, kicking and cursing at it. Though I'm usually a calm and subdued person, I may have even thrown a punch or two.

At the end of the evening, we went to the awards ceremony. For championships, all of the drumline members from every school line up on the court to hear the results and to accept medals. To our right was Ayala High School, the drumline we knew would win First Place. To our left was Arcadia High School, our rival that we hoped to beat. On one side, Arcadia's drummers were giving us dirty and angry looks. On the other, Ayala was all smiles, congratulating us on our performance, and saying things like "Go USA! Go Everyone! We're All Winners!". Ugh...I couldn't stand either one.

One by one, they announced the results. Eventually:

3rd Place: Arcadia High School

2nd Place: La Canada High School!

1st: Ayala

We were all elated! It was such a great end to a crazy day, and a long season. We wore our silver medals proudly, and exited the arena. We thanked all the parents, boarded the bus, and headed home.

During the ride back to La Canada, the excitement slowly began to sink in. I realized how much we had accomplished over the past season. Our long hours and strenuous practicing had paid off, and we developed a strong sense of camaraderie and work ethic. All in all, it was a truly fulfilling experience, and quite an achievement for a group of high schoolers. We got back to LC around dawn, thoroughly exhausted from the days' events. Nevertheless, we all wished each other goodbye and headed home feeling proud, our stock higher than ever.