phew.
let me go through the last 2-3 weeks in brief detail. (though this may come out to be a novel, it is still abridged, i guarantee it is.)
so april rolls around and the cal aggie marching band-uh goes into this time called "picnic day season". obviously, i need to give you some background for this story to make sense. so here's the long story short-- picnic day is like... a day of festivities; it kind of reminded me of a mix of the orange county fair and the fourth of july parade. it's a really big event in davis, since the whole city takes part in it. in addition, other organizations, groups, and spectators come from all over the place: berkeley, stanford, sacramento, humboldt (f*ckers), san francisco, and even san diego. and it is just a happy day filled with festivities. now. that's picnic day. but what does the cal aggie marching band-uh! have anything to do with this day? most everything.
from the very buttcrack of april's start until picnic day (which was april 17th this year), the marching bandsmen practice their asses off. i can't even begin to fill you guys in on the hours that were stacked on top of one another, day after day, week after week. a typical day for a bandsmen is as follows (and was/is always subject to change):
marching practice 4pm-6pm
marching practice 7pm-9pm
float building (this will be elaborated later in this post)/marching practice 9pm-12mid
and that's an easy day.
in other words, the past two and a half weeks have been complete hell for my body, stressful for my mind, and way too much time allocated to satisfy a crowd for several hours on picnic day. notice on my mini-schedule... it says "float building". yes... the freshmen make a band float for the parade... from scratch. i'm really excited that we got the "best student organization" award for that, because damn, we spent so much time on that. my legs hate me, to say the least, i haven't slept in so long (save for sunday, the day after picnic day. i slept in for 16 hours)... but if you know me at all, you should know that all this complaining is not really complaining; it's me overexcited about band. but you all knew that already :)
let's save all the other stuff for another time... i want to get to the really good part: the battle of the bands, which started at 2pm. so a total of six bands competed: uci, ucsd, berkeley, stanford, humboldt (assholes), and us (uc davis). the rule is as follows: play until you have no songs to play. no repeating of any song, whether your school played it or not. of course, most everyone knows how it starts... we started off well, trying to steal each other's songs. blah, blah... on goes the battle. uci and ucsd leave around 9pm. then cal leaves 30min or so after that. so that left three bands left. well... the battle had just begun. humboldt (pricks) were obviously being asses (notice i've been degrading them for what they are in parenthesis after their pathetic school name); they wouldn't budge. stanford was actually really respectful, defying their "usual stereotype". they cheered us on, and they were extremely considerate. they kept us company until about 12mid., and then we were head-to-head against humboldt (bastards). the battle kept going. as we played harder songs, they pulled out a lame-ass middle school "tv themes" songbook to keep busy. ::shakes head:: you would think, at least, they'd battle with pride and dignity... what dumbasses.
and then some obscenity goes on for about two hours... and of course, we win. at 2am, after 12 hours of nonstop battling, it was finally over. this marked history in out band-uh as "the longest battle to have ever go on" on picnic day. but it wasn't going to end any other way. and it was the best picnic day, ever. i've only experienced this day once... but i KNOW this will never be surmounted by another picnic day. oh, man... we kicked humboldt's ass. and had ourselves a blast.
humboldt: we won, you lost. pathetic attempt to win, losers.
to those who read this god-awfully long post: i love you for sticking around. you rock.
band-uh! and alumni: i'm so proud to be a part of the best picnic day ever.
i love band. i am such a bando. i love it.
mai - alto sax, 2004
p.s. - thanks, nav, for nominating me yet once again, for the "most likely to remain a bando for life" award. i am quite honored and i sincerely appreciate your nomination. i love you, daddykins!
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