Today’s cruel taunting of the already wounded comes to us courtesy of regular commenter Basset, who forwards this photo of the Ohio State University Marching Band’s postgame show Monday night:
Funny, but sloppy Photoshopping; I can see the cloned areas. Although I’m an alum of the smaller, less well-known Ohio University, with its own excellent marching band, I have to say: I always enjoyed Script Ohio. Early in my career I had to do a lot of “first woman” stories. That is to say, “Miss X is the first woman to do whatever” stories. Among them was one on the first woman to dot the i in Script Ohio, a big honor for the sousaphone players. I recall only that my lead called it “something to toot your tuba about.” How thrilled my editors must have been, to see this early promise of the writer within.
Gah, a long day lies ahead. I hope I have all my obligations written down. The night before last was a stressful one, with two middle-of-the-night phone calls, followed by a busy day. In late afternoon I tried to catch a nap. I was lying on my bed with a paperback, trying to relax, and the next thing I knew it was dark outside and the phone was ringing. Foolishly, I answered it. Of course it was someone who wanted to talk to me about a job. I’m sure they won’t want to hire the aphasic idiot they spoke to, who said “uhhhh” a lot and seemed to be communicating from the bottom of a Placidyl binge, but you never know. I appear to have made an appointment to speak with them later. Note to self: Use lots of under-eye concealer.
One thing before I forget: Is anyone out there flying on Northwest Airlines this month, at least before the in-flight magazine changes to February? If so, grab the January issue. Kate’s in it. Really. This was yesterday’s excitement. Her birthday party in November was a repeat of last year’s, with a small group of her friends invited to ice-skate at Campus Martius Park downtown. A photographer was lurking around the edges of the rink, snapping photos. He was obviously a professional — he held his camera like one, anyway, and he wasn’t wearing skates — and we struck up a conversation. He said he was shooting candids of the rink for Northwest Airlines’ magazine. The girls went insane, of course, thinking their next step would be America’s Next Top Model, so I explained about how photographers shoot dozens of photos and only one or two get used, if that, so don’t get your hopes up and blah blah blah. Then we had pizza and everyone forgot about it.
Until yesterday, when I had to go over to Kate’s school, and she shows me the magazine, and whaddaya know, there’s her birthday-party ice conga line. Everyone’s in profile except one of the girls in the middle, who had turned to look at the photographer, resembling this sort of serene blonde ice angel. One of that girl’s mother’s friends was flying somewhere, opened the magazine, said, “I know that girl,” and the rest is a bunch of phone calls and checks sent off for extra copies. If you’re on an NWA flight, though, grab one (there’s a snorkeler on the cover, enjoying the many benefits of a vacation to Cancun) and drop me an e-mail. You can never have enough extra copies of Baby’s First Appearance in a National Magazine.
I guess next year I’ll have to invite Vanity Fair.
Dorothy said on January 10, 2007 at 10:49 am
Did I mention that my son got engaged to an OU girl at Christmas time? He’s in his last year at OSU. They met in Cincinnati when he went to high school there for only his senior year. We’re very excited! She’s a great girl, funny and smart and down to earth. The wedding is 16 months from today!
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Kirk said on January 10, 2007 at 11:30 am
nance, that photoshop job is good enough for non-computer geniuses such as i, especially as it makes fun of that over-rated band, which produces near-orgasm in so many yokels around here. if marching bands used formations like that one more often, i might stick around to watch at halftime instead of visiting the latrine.
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nancy said on January 10, 2007 at 11:37 am
The Stanford band is known for amusing field formations. I recall reading about one called “the wide world of birth control” or some such. Some of the band members formed a diaphragm, while others played spermatozoa, and hurled themselves vainly against its surface.
Many more citations here.
Figures. Smartasses.
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 11:57 am
The only flaws my eyes immediately caught are the fouled up yard line numbers.
btw – hasn’t the Stanford band actually gotten their team (if not their whole sports program) penalized for past antics?
I’d give ’em an A+ for entertainment value, and an F for adherence to their mission
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I thought I could get a peek at
http://www.nwaworldtraveler.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=3BA4583DD6074B17AC433C6F1DB1729B&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=3957F5254A4442B384F8B08F0A6D52C0
but alas- no pics there
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basset said on January 10, 2007 at 1:13 pm
hey, I went to Indiana, so I don’t have any room to taunt anyone about football…
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John said on January 10, 2007 at 1:37 pm
My very first college football game (as a student) was Boston College v. Stanford. (I went to BC). Boston was celebrating it’s 350th anniversary, or something like that. So the Stanford band’s halftime show celebrated “350 Years of Violence in America.” I recall they spelled out “Lizzy B” and “S & M.” We were all very amused. But then, Boston is not a hotbed of college marching bands.
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Kirk said on January 10, 2007 at 2:18 pm
stanford’s band was the only one i hung around to watch when i was in college. can’t remember much about the show except that it was funny and they did a formation which they claimed was a lipstick but was hugely open to other interpretation.
what’s pathetic is when marching bands try to play rock music. at the rose bowl this year, michigan’s tribute to led zeppelin was laughable. “kashmir” just sounded silly.
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Connie said on January 10, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I have always remembered leaving the stadium at Michigan State after MSU trounced OSU. The band marched out singing an appropriate version of the I’m from Ohio song. It started out “I don’t give a d**n about the whole state of Michigan….
And for those of you are remembering me rooting for UM against OSU, well I was born at UM when my Dad was in grad school, went to MSU for my BA, and UM for my MLS. And married into a seriously multigenerational MSU family, so my blood is both green and blue.
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LA mary said on January 10, 2007 at 3:14 pm
“my blood is both green and blue”
Vulcan nobility, no doubt.
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Danny said on January 10, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Hey, kirk, I too was cracking up at the Michigan band’s tribute. Stairway really sucked too.
But then I commented to my family on USC’s marching band. I have a DVD of Fleetwood Mac’s comeback concert, The Dance. Very good concert and one of the highpoints was the finale where USC’s band joins FM on stage for Tusk and Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.
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LA mary said on January 10, 2007 at 4:11 pm
My high school marching band used to do a tribute to Herman’s Hermits. Why? I don’t know.
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 4:26 pm
WOOL BULLY!!
(wooly bully)
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Wait! That’s Sam the Sham and the Pharohs…
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Kirk said on January 10, 2007 at 4:36 pm
danny, i agree with you re: USC band on “The Dance.” i guess marching bands doing rock is OK as long they’re the backup band.
but the USC band was doing its own weird rock stuff at the rose bowl. can’t remember what it was now
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ashley said on January 10, 2007 at 4:42 pm
This year, OU (Oklahoma) played a tribute to Queen at halftime of the whatever bowl.
Yes, they played Fat Bottomed Girls…wonder how they got away with it.
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Kirk said on January 10, 2007 at 5:05 pm
When they submitted the halftime program to the bowl officials, they probably listed it as something like “The Back Porch March.”
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Kirk said on January 10, 2007 at 5:17 pm
The Ohio State band, meanwhile, appropriately played the theme from “Titanic.”
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Jim in Fla said on January 10, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Herman’s Hermits…You must have performed “Kind of a Hush All Over the World”, “Mrs Brown, You Got a Lovely Daugher”, “I’m into something Good” and/or “I’m ‘Enery the 8th I Am”
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Dorothy said on January 10, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I love “Tusk”!
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LA mary said on January 10, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Jim
I wasn’t performing anything. I was in the stands thinking how crappy “kind of hush” was as a march tune.
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Karen said on January 10, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Two band-related notes:
1. I spent ten years at Stanford and saw many bad and some good band performances (including the legendary Notre Dame game). The best was at the 2000 Rose Bowl v. Wisconsin. The UW band went first, masters at precision and music. Then the Stanford band swarmed the field and made… a square, then a triangle, and then spelled “EASY.” The rest of the show was the usual madness.
2. My three-year old son is entranced with the YouTube video of script Ohio. We have been known to watch it 5-10 times in a row… something about watching people make “numbers” (not letters, to him) is just amazing!
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Jim in Fla said on January 10, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I was in the stands thinking how crappy “kind of hush�? was as a march tune.
LOL. Kind of a Hush would be a crappy marching tune. And Henery the 8th is just annoying.
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 7:42 pm
And Henery the 8th is just annoying
and a genuine pain in the neck to his wives (so to speak)
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brian stouder said on January 10, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Early in my career I had to do a lot of “first woman�? stories. That is to say, “Miss X is the first woman to do whatever�? stories.
By the way – I think it is a little refreshing – and maybe a genuine measure of our society’s progress – that Nancy Pelosi is not being defined simply as “the first woman Speaker of the House in United States history” (even though that really is very big stuff!). A deluge of stories focusing on that would almost surely reduce her to a novelty, instead of the talented politician that she clearly is.
Going forward, if she is compared to the fellow she replaced (who looked like nothing so much as the sleepy Maytag repair man), she almost cannot help but be viewed as a success all around, and in her own right.
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nancy said on January 10, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Which legendary ND game did you see, Karen? The one where the drum major conducted the band dressed as a nun and waving a crucifix, or the “These Irish, Why Do They Fight?” show?
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LA mary said on January 10, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Every photo I’ve seen of Dennis Hastert lately shows him slack jawed with eyes either closed or half closed. It’s not his best look. He looked like that every time the camera caught him at the Gerald Ford funeral. Is he on the Rehnquist relaxation program?
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ashley said on January 11, 2007 at 2:27 am
The worst marching band experience of my life (other than marching behind the friggin clydesdales at the orange bowl parade) was having to play “Elvira” at FSU. We actually had 8′ sheets of plywood we painted to resemble eyes. Oh goodness…
The coolest was when we didn’t work up a show at all in High School, and marched out in the shape of a fish and played scales.
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Connie said on January 11, 2007 at 11:35 am
The worst marching band experience of my life – I’m the only kid in my family who was NEVER in a marching band – was being the parent of a high school kid in a seriously competitive Indiana high school marching band. This past season, with her off at college, I felt freed! I had my Saturdays back!
Though it was fun to go to state finals in the Dome all 4 years. 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 1st, Class B, so I try not to complain too much, after all they were hard working champs.
And I never would have found indianamarching.com without a long ago remark from you, Nancy.
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Noneyall said on January 11, 2007 at 3:28 pm
“There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.” – Woody Hayes
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Karen said on January 11, 2007 at 5:01 pm
The ND performance I saw entailed the drum major dressed up as the “Stanford Cardinal”, I think the dancers might have been nuns, and the theme of the show was the Irish Potato Famine There were also tubas as sperm, but I can’t remember why there were there. It got the band suspended from performing at any Stanford-NotreDame games in South Bend, which I think is still the case! They used to have a web page with the old scripts to their shows, but I can’t find it now.
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basset said on January 11, 2007 at 5:15 pm
My high school (Loogootee) didn’t play football.. and I didn’t go to a single football game while I was at IU… but if I’d been smart enough to get into Stanford, I might have actually had some reason to show up at the stadium on those fall Saturdays .
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Casey said on January 16, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Go bobcats! I went to grad school there – graduated with two masters and a husband. When were you there? I was there from 1988 – 1991.
Parents went to Stanford. Back in the day when half time shows were broadcast, I remember watching Standford’s band doing this wild scattered, chaotic melee between formaions. Too young at the long time to get the nuances.
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