Narbonic

Okay, I'm hooked.

fordprfct got me started on the Narbonic comic. (yes, the drawing and the words get clearer)

I skip most of the Sunday featurette things. Except for the Victorian trip to the moon, that one I read. A lot of the extra art is weird, and I can't stand guest strips. (on any webcomic. Why do they do that? I've only ONCE seen a guest strip that was worth reading - and that's because it was a lot better than the usual comic.)

But the main story has hooked me, and I've lost a lot of time to reading this. I'm up to July 2005 now.

This one particularly amuses me. Yeah, I have some things in common with Dave...

DCI Quarterfinals on the Big Screen

selenite is a darling husband, and knows just how to make me happy. He took me out tonight to a DCI show - the 2006 DCI World Championship Quarterfinals in Madison, WI being broadcast to certain theaters around the country. WOW. Just my sort of thing.

In retrospect, we should have *expected* the many many schoolbuses parked all around the theater. I guess it didn't occur to us because it's not during the school year. Yes, apparently a lot of schools packed up their bands and sent them to come see this. Good thing Karl had bought tickets ahead of time online, it was sold out. At first I thought we were going to end up with crap seats - way down at the bottom, far right - but then they brought the lights up a bit and some of the band director types were telling all the high schoolers, hey everybody, move in to the middle, close it up, there will be more people coming in - and when they did that, I grabbed the moment and went scurrying up the stairs to a spot where three seats had just opened up on an edge, at a height more compatible with my eyes. Yay.

We got to see the top 11 corps. They start with the lesser ranked ones and move up, and I don't know how long they'd been broadcasting, but given that we were there for 3 1/2 hours, I'm fine with us missing the earlier ones. The Madison Scouts were actually one of the earlier ones we saw - surprising, but yeah, honestly they were better when we saw them in '99. Lessee - we saw the Glassmen, the Scouts, the Boston Crusaders, the Blue Knights, the Carolina Crown, the Santa Clara Vanguard, the Bluecoats, the Cadets, the Phantom Regiment, the Blue Devils, and the Cavaliers.

There was a lotta wow. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. That said - it does bug me how many bands get into this whole dissonant thing. "Let's pick weird dissonant or odd time signature music, that is harder - we'll impress the judges! Let's have our flag corps do weird modern dance stuff that doesn't fit with the music and is jerky, that's harder, and we'll impress the judges!" Gah. Guys, just because you can do something hard doesn't mean that it's good. (Just because you can doesn't mean you should.) They end up, IMO, forgetting the whole idea of music and performance that MOVES the audience. Sigh. Fortunately not all of them were like that.

But honestly, people. If the commentators are talking about well, it's really hard to follow this piece musically - then you SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT. I think it was the Crusaders that was bugging me on this, but at this point I can't remember who did what for many of them. Although I think it was the Glassmen doing the Beethoven Deafness and Madness thing - interesting concept, and yes, very interesting to change the one part of the music to what Beethoven might have been hearing it as while losing the last of his hearing, but in practice, OW OW OW make it stop. The part done briefly in silence, that was fine, although the rest of the audience seemed to find it more impressive than I did.

The top three were amazing. I liked the Blue Devils' concept better (a Godfather thing), but yes, the Cavaliers did an amazing job executing theirs (machine/robot thing). Despite one poor guy having a focus shot with a solo fancy rifle throw and muffing the catch. I thought Phantom Regiment did a lovely job, and Carolina Crown stuck in my memory too.

I was thinking about the xylophones and the big drums and such that they have up front - those give me mixed feelings, adds to the music, yes, but ... ideally in my mind, drum corps would be all marching, and no mikes. The ones that used mike voiceover effects - eh. Nah. Doesn't do it for me.

Primarily the Cadets. Sorry guys. Fancy show, yes - but, um. Karl quoted a bit said by French Marshal Pierre Bosquet about the Charge of the Light Brigade - "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." ("It is magnificent, but it is not war.") The Cadets had quite a show - but IMHO it was not drum corps.

I would have liked to see some serious drum line showing off, but not really. Although the Vanguard's field exit was great.

Quote du jour, a Bujold bit from Diplomatic Immunity that I was thinking about this evening:

It wasn't enough that humans did something so difficult as learning to play a musical instrument. Then they had to do it in groups. While walking around. In complicated patterns. And then they competed with one another to do it even better. Excellence, this kind of excellence, could never have any sane economic justification. It had to be done for the honor of one's country, or one's people, or the glory of God. For the joy of being human.