The March of Regress

Note to Retarded Parents: Remember that T-shirt when you pop your heart/cholesterol/high blood pressure/boner medicines cause without the skienze behind evilushun, Jeebus wouldn’t have given Pfizer, Merck and whoever them to sell to you at an incredible markup.

I’ll be sure to send my kids to school packing a little Peyote in their lunch box… let’s see how long the district stays “neutral,” then

Nice. And the Ayn Rand Institute is donating books to my kids’ public school for required reading. Where are these parents when this shit is happening? Oh yeah, they don’t read. BTW, I was a band geek…trumpet…would have loved that tee.

The band director should have T-shirts printed up with a picture of Bill Chase on a cross with the legend, “He died for the brass” and program a show of variations on the theme from the “Exorcist” – if he can get the kids to march 4/4 against 7/8.

@nojo: Lock Up Your Daughters!! You dear sweet thing for bringing a smile this AM. Haven’t heard that title in years. An old and dear friend was in the original production in London. Sidebar: she had, as Coward puts it, a vast bust. Her boyfriend at the time who was, as they say, a villain, whenever he was in Paris ‘working’, would buy her expensive underwear. To get the bra size right he’d put a cup over his head. If it fitted him it’d fit her. *sigh* Happy times.

Oh yes and this evolution band zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

On-topic TJ/ Nabisco Jr. came home from first day of fourth grade positively thrilled with the choices of instruments they have for this first year of school band-like instructions. Against some kind of scoring, he topped out with high proficiency on the clarinet and the violin, average proficiency on the viola. He didn’t try any horns or other woodwind because, as he said, he “thought it wasn’t fair to the others”. He’ll probably be adding violin to his repertoire.

Oh, and he notched his first – and the only of the scrimmage – sack (for a loss of ten yards!) at organized flag football last night. It took him three plays before he realized it was okay for him to keep running until he actually caught up with the quarterback.

/end paternal crowing TJ

@The Nabisco Quiver:
If he picks up clarinet, make sure he has strong teef. I didn’t because I needed braces. Let’s just put it this way, dad wasn’t too happy with the lousy clarinet squawking and the orthodontist bills.

My high school soccer team (one guess as to who organized this) had these t-shirts printed up that started with a guy hunched over a football about to hike it, then evolved through the ape and Neanderthal man, and ended with a woman with a soccer ball, and underneath it said “The Evolution of Soccer”.

Words cannot express how much I loved that shirt. One season we wore them to class every other game day.

I’m sure that more than 20 (gulp!) years on, they would have been banned.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Push for the oboe if they have it – good players are rare, and they can always make money. Keep him away from the viola and the double bass.

@blogenfreude: Hmm, hadn’t thought of oboe. He tried the clarinet because of Squidward from Sponge Bob, but seems most interested in the violin. I’ve always loved the viola, but mostly when I’ve seen them seductively bowed between a woman’s legs.

@SanFranLefty: That’s a great shirt! My brother has one evolving from a runner into a cyclist.

@blogenfreude: My daughter, who plays flute, says that oboeists all get brain damage from the backpressure. There is some rivalry between those sections, I take it.

@The Nabisco Quiver: He couldnt’a tacked me. I was too big to be tackled — enough guys had to jump on me until we all fell to the ground. Downside was that I was completely immobile.

@blogenfreude: I would think that a bass player could always find work because there are so many guitarists and drummers around.

@Dodgerblue: My oboe playing HS girlfriend’s dad used to tell her that.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Son of RML is being heavily recruited for football (US American style) by the coach, who is his PE teacher. As T Catt and D Blue could tell you, the kid is huge for the 7th grade. He’s more of a skater/snowboarder type with asthma, so we’ll see how it’ll work out. No pressure from on him from the parental front.

Bisco: if your kid has any inclination toward the cello, it’s almost a guaranteed chick magnet for the chicks who aren’t attracted by the footballness. Downside: it’s a right pain to get around, generally taking up a seat wherever you go, which is a super downer when you have to buy another ticket for it on the airplane.

@The Nabisco Quiver: @ManchuCandidate: @cuthbert: Holla, band geeks! Oh yes, I wore a sweaty, scratchy, frilly nylon dickie and matching cummerbund every weekend in the fall throughout HS–and had a blast, quite frankly. I played the clarinet; never very good at it, but I loved its mellow tone. It was, however, the only marching band instrument that could not be played even with the thinnest of gloves on, so us ‘nettos had to wear fingerless gloves even when it was snowing.

‘Bisco, the disadvantage of your young one choosing the oboe would have to be…well, listening to an oboe being played all the time. Since I’m assuming you probably want to continue to love your child, I would say it’s in both your best interests to steer him toward the instrument you can tolerate listening to a lot.

@IanJ: He’s too young to buy the chick magnet argument, but I get it.

@redmanlaw: @Dodgerblue: This is flag football still (9 y.o.), so he hasn’t even really learned to tackle properly. But all it took was the coach telling him to keep running at the QB for him to blitz from the right outside line for a loss. It was beautiful. He had a good turn at blocking back as well, but has no hands yet for WR. No future as a baller, I don’t think, but he’s a great climber on a single gear Schwinn.

ADD: @flippin eck: We’ve already sat through two recitals for his piano teacher’s students of both piano and violin, and even the accomplished kids make mistakes on violin that sound like a Blue Meanie stepping on bagpipes in Pepperland.

@flippin eck: Band geek here also.

As someone who played jazz guitar and piano for a time, I highly recommend more double bass players in this world.

Can we give the Stanford Band some props?

Spotted Owl

Stanford Banned!

ADD: Interview with The Tree

@redmanlaw:

Oh yes, he is a large child. I thought he was 15 or 16 when I met him. He could really put a hurt on somebody if he wanted to, but he seems a little placid and amused to actually do anything like that.

@JNOV:

Hello Be-yooti-ful!

@Tommmcatt Floats: I luvs you, Handsome Luv!

@JNOV:

And I you. When is the next awesome JNOV video coming out?

@Tommmcatt Floats:

“Hate! How Low Can You Go?”

The Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ.

@The Nabisco Quiver: He’s too young to buy the chick magnet argument, but I get it.

Yeah, that comment wasn’t really for him.

@flippin eck: Don’t be dissing on the oboe — well played, they’re quite nice. It’s getting to that point that’s trying, but that’s true of most instruments. Guitar is the only instrument I can think of right off hand (and plucked bass, I guess) that makes it hard to produce horrible noises of the squeaking/squawking/honking/screeching variety.

@IanJ: Nope, sorry, I’m firmly anti-oboe. If the cello is the instrument that most closely resembles a human voice/range, than the oboe resembles Fran Drescher’s.

And speaking of cellos, I seem to recall that you were already sufficiently drooled over by the Stinque girls and gheys last time you brought it up…don’t get greedy. (And yes I may be compensating a bit for the embarrassment of being one of the main droolies, but never mind that.)

@flippin eck: @IanJ: Okay, take it to the clubhouse, kids. But be home by midnight, ya hear!

On a much happier note, Ben & Jerry’s is renaming Chubby Hubby ice cream to be Hubby Hubby in honor of same sex marriages occurring in Vermont.

ADD: Whoops! Meant to put this on the Cohen post. Oh well.

And flippin and Ian, get a room!

@flippin eck: Ok, agreed that oboe’s not for everyone. I like it when it’s played well, though, so nyah. And I was sufficiently drooled over, thank you. I wasn’t fishing for more, I was just advising ‘Bisco Jr. through his dad, that’s all. You’ll know when I’m fishing for compliments. ;)

@The Nabisco Quiver and SanFranLefty : Pff, midnight? In your dreams.

If it’s a trumpet, buy a case of mutes.