ell, I promised at the end of my last incredibly geeky entry that I’d write another one soon and fill y’all in on the fascinating details of my non-geeky life. 8:25 on a Wednesday evening seems like as good a time as any to do that. I just hope I can remember *anything* even slightly interesting to write about.
I guess I can start with the Deep South Brass Band Festival. Sometime around May of 2008, I think, the GBB was approached by the organizers of a new brass festival which was being planned in Pine Mountain, Georgia, as a sort of competition for the well-established “Great American Brass Band Festival,” which has been held annually since 1989 in Danville, Kentucky.
We were pleased to accept their offer to play a couple concerts – on May 1 of this year – for a number of reasons. Exposure, $5K, and the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new brass festival in our own backyard were the primary ones. We were treated very well by the festival organizers, who arranged for free hotel rooms for anyone in the band who wanted to spend the night (Pine Mountain is about 2 hours from Atlanta), gave us lunch, and had some nice things to say about us:
2008 NATIONAL CHAMPION BRASS BAND TO PERFORM AT PINE MOUNTAIN’S BRASS BAND FESTIVALFriday Evening. Reception Tickets and Saturday Concert Tables are Available.
An impressive list of brass bands are lining up for the first annual Deep South Brass Band Festival in Pine Mountain, Georgia. Topping the list is the 2008 National Champion Brass Band – the Georgia Brass Band.
(From The Calloway Gardens Website)
In addition to the GBB, the festival featured performances by the Midtown Brass (a 5tet out of Atlanta comprised primarily of GBB members and althernates), the Eighth Regiment Band (a civil-war reenactment band out of Rome, GA), the Jericho Brass (a standard brass band from Chattanooga), The Atlanta Brass (a jazz/rock band from Atlanta with – forgive me – a saxophone), and one or two other groups that, among other things, marched in a parade on Saturday morning.
Our afternoon concert, on the town green in Pineville, was fairly well-received by a relatively sparse crowd (maybe 200 people out for a picnic on the lawn). After a few hours of down time, we took the stage again, this time on the beach at Calloway Gardens. What a difference a few hours and a change of venue can make. The evening crowd was larger than the afternoon set, packed a bit tighter, and feeling quite a bit tighter, too – if you get my drift.
Between heckling our director (good-naturedly, it seemed) and yelling for “Freeeeebiiiiiird!” (which our solo cornetist provided for them), the audience was enthusiastic, attentive and an absolute joy to play for. The band seemed to feed off of the crowd’s adrenaline. The video below (randomly chosen from several available on YouTube.com) doesn’t really let you hear how good we sounded, but it might give some idea of the atmosphere.
To make a long story longer, the GBB was a hit with the crowd and with the organizers, and we’ve already been asked to provide repeat performances in 2010 – and perhaps do a concert by ourselves sometime before then.
At around the same time as the Deep South Brass thingy, I decided to save a bunch of money by not drinking. Don’t get all freaky, Mom: I’m not doing one of those, “Oh crap, I’m out of control and must abstain before I die or wind up begging for spare gum” things. Just decided that I needed some new computer stuff and wanted to get more agressive with my debt, so I more or less gave up the booze. Went 30 days before I had anything stronger than a Diet Coke (wait – is “near beer” stronger?), and discovered that being completely sober all the time does have some benefits.
I also discovered that being completely sober all the time plays absolute HELL with one’s dart game. I may be saving money on bar tabs and gasoline, but I think I’m losing considerably more than that on darts bets. Overnight, I went from being one of the strongest two or three players on the north side of Atlanta to a complete laughingstock. People who used to be my whipping boys are phoning me everyday to ask if I want to come be humiliated by them. Damned lucky I’m such a laid-back, non-competitive guy, huh? Right.
I did notice after several weeks, however, that my blood pressure had dropped significantly. So that’s pretty cool.
In mid-May, a group which has been quietly putting together plans to improve Furman’s football stadium started feeding me details about said plans, which are exceedingly cool. I’m not allowed to get too specific here (this blog is, after all, searchable. It has been found by Furman people who know me); but suffice it to say that this group, led by former Furman star Jeff Blankenship, will be doing a great many necessary things which – for reasons I won’t go into – Furman’s administration has not done. For starters, the 2009 football season will see the the unveiling of a 360-square
I know that Dad and Cy are now shaking their heads and muttering about how college is supposed to be for learning and it’s a complete shame that Furman is spending so much money on a stupid game and yada yada yada; but I must say two things:
- One – Furman isn’t spending anything. This is a privately-funded effort.
- Two – some of us like football, so be quiet.
- Three – it’s MY blog, dammit. I can say three things instead of two if I want to.
Speaking of Cy, it certainly looks as though I’ll be in Canada again this summer! What is this? 17 straight years? Anyway, I know I’ll be a be able to at least schedule two weeks off (whether I get to actually take them depends largely on whether or not AT&T’s western labor force goes on strike – they’re currently working without a contract, and the eastern force’s contract ends in a couple of months). I haven’t completely decided on when exactly those two weeks will be, but the tentative plan is from July 3-20. There is a possibility that I’ll move everything up a week (taking the last week of June and the first of July), but the chances of that happening are dropping as we get further into June. I’d really like to do that (schedule for June) because there are some things going on in Kentucky during the last week of June that I’d like to see, but I just can’t figure out how to get that in AND get to Canada AND feel relaxed when it’s all over. Such is the life of a guy with a vast array of interests – none of which involve writing metrics for AT&T.
I’ve now mowed the lawns three times so far this year and we’re still 15 days away from the start of summer. I suppose that the grass wouldn’t grow so fast if it didn’t rain every day….
I still haven’t gotten to do any serious camping/hiking this year, and it’s starting to make me mildly crazy. Thought I was going last weekend, but my hiking buddy apparently doesn’t own a calendar and told me at the last minute that he had to stay in town to watch his niece graduate from college. What a dork.
And that pretty much catches you up on the highlights of the last month or two.
Oh – the title thing up there? The bit about the bubbles and the pirate? It’s really quite simple. I met this girl, see. She’s sort of cool. Kind of. In a weird way. Okay, she’s really cool. Stop nagging already.
At any rate, we were talking on the phone the other day and she was describing a computer game that she was staring at which involved virtual bubbles that explode, causing other virtual bubbles to explode, which make other virtual bubbles explode…I assume the game ends when the world is sucked into a virtual black hole if everything is carried to its logical virtual conclusion, but I didn’t ask. I told her that this game sounded just….um….fascinating, and then suggested that she take up boxing or something.
Saying this reminded me of a time when I was about 7; and Greg, after convincing Mom that boxing gloves were actually soft and fluffy (and that being hit with one was akin to being playfully swatted with a smiling baby bunny), proceeded to pummel me until I was a sobbing, bloody shell of a boy in the Weirs’ side yard in Vermont. Now that I ponder it in more detail, I think that’s also the day that Mr. Weir let me try a sip of his beer for the first time. Humiliated, bleeding, bruised on every inch of my head and hitting the sauce. What a great memory for a 7-year-old.
Naturally, I told this story to the exploding bubble girl. I told her that Mr. Weir was (I thought) Dad’s best man and that he lived in Underhill. As a sort of mnemonic device (who knows? I may test her on her knowledge of my 7th year of life at some point), I pointed out that Underhill, VT, was also the hometown of Captain Richard Phillips. You’ll recall that the good Underhillian captain saved his ship (the Maersk Alabama) and all aboard it by offering himself as a hostage to Somali pirates – most of whom were summarily shot by Navy SEALs a couple of days later. Neat, huh? They’re going to make a movie about it. No kidding.
Exploding bubble girl – who is unbelievably smart about a great many things – was momentarily silent after I gave her this fantastic bit of my boxing history and the equally-fantastic mnemonic device with which to remember where it all happened.
She then inquired of me, “So your uncle was a pirate?”
Just think: without that question, we’d have no title for this month’s blog entry. And I’d have missed out on a really good laugh.
TWD