Monday, January 07, 2008

Seventy-six trombones ... would be seventy-five more than it would take to make me jump off a cliff

It seems like the hideous, tedious, seemingly endless college bowl season is going to come to a close, at long last, after tonight's championship game ... please, God. The BCS system has more bowls than the world's biggest head shop. And, this season, despite a few half-hearted attempts, I have succeeded in watching more than two minutes of none. Nor did I watch more than a few minutes of any college football game during the regular season. So, tonight's my last chance until autumn to do something I really hate doing -- watch college football!

I don't think I'll last more than another few seconds. The pre-game show itself, obnoxiously bleating in the background, made me finally realize why I can't get into college football, even slightly.

It's because I fucking hate marching band music. I never quite realized how much I hated it before now, but the urge to throw myself outside into the thunderstorming night and under a lightning bolt is giving me a clue as to how deep and broad my despisementition of this awful noise goes. I apologize to anyone who was a band nerd ... Wait. No. No, I don't. YOU apologize to ME.

Jesus Christ, it sounds like a column of fascists torturing cats. Farting cats. And farting fascists. With farting cats in their assholes. Actually, I take that back. What I've just described would probably sound pretty damn cool. Marching band music, on the other hand, is just bombastic, shrill, assaultive, and ugly.

Ach. It almost makes me wish they'd start running that goddamn They Might Be Giants "That's FrItalian" Dunkin Donuts commercial again during every break (sometimes twice in a row), just to wash the stink of brass and valve-drained spit out of my brain. Almost.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not proud, so I'm sorry.

If it helps your pain at all, I was conscripted into marching band by evil band directors, as are at least 75% of the woodwinds. If you do Concert Band (and if you hate this, well, I guess you hate sophomore year of high school me...and you're not alone!) you gots to do Marching Band too.

But it sucked, man. Did it ever suck, especially hung over.

Damn, you'd get a blog award for this post if you'd posted it in 2007. I'll have to remember this one for 2008.

Anonymous said...

Whelp, I actually enjoy marching band music, and parades, even though I was never a band geek. So I no apologize!

But I cannot be trusted as a judge of any culture, let alone music, since I've grown to loathe all of the music of "my generation," meaning a bunch of failed musicians formerly known as "college bands" who now play (insert usurped vintage musical genre previously dominated by poor blacks and/or rural people here.)

At least the shiny white rich students in their expensive uniforms are playing music appropriate for their social ilk, while goosestepping their way into lucrative public relations jobs.

Although this consistency is only a coincidence-- the truth is that I'd actually enjoy parade music if it were performed by Indians on horses.

Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss said...

I didn't always hate marching band music, or parades, or college football. Gradually I've come to dislike all those things for some reason -- the realization that marching band music irritates me was something of a recent discovery. I used to be married to a band chick (bari sax player), but I don't think that's the source of my animus. There's a very good chance that my years in Urbana-Champaign are what did it, since marching bands, obnoxious alumni, and Chief Illiniwek are pretty well tied together. UIUC has a really good law school, but I could have done without the experience of living in a "Big 10" town, ugh.

By the way, concert band is cool with me, and I really dig jazz band (I saw the Northern Illinois U. jazz band play behind Tito Puente once in Aurora, and that was an awesome show) ... so it's Sousa and his like that I'm dissing here, not the poor schlubbs in the goofy clothes lugging their instruments around a stupid field in a dumb stadium full of jerks.

Stronger Than Dirt Pete Moss said...

POSTSCRIPT: In yet another case of a great mind thinking somewhat like a much lesser mind (i.e., mine), the trusty and scrappy Ken Tremendous over at the Fire Joe Morgan blog (http://www.firejoemorgan.com/) had this to say in a brief post dated Jan. 7 (entirety of post pasted below):

Terrible Non-Post-Worthy Hacky Sub-Seinfeldian Observational Crumb of the Week

Is there anything worse than the endless shots of, and auditory assault from, college marching bands during bowl game halftime shows?

No. No, there is not.

Labels: nothing, pointless

posted by Ken Tremendous # 9:58 PM

Anonymous said...

I watched a good chunk of U of I's Rose Bowl parade, and for the halftime show, I kid you not, the U of I band played "Stairway to Heaven", which why the "Fighting" Illini not only lost the will to win, but, really, the will to live. You may ask, "But weren't the Illini sucking before halftime?" Oh, they knew the horror that was to come.

Anonymous said...

I think this whole thread is hilarious, because you hate college football to begin with, so the fact that you're complaining about the horrible halftime show is kind of like eating a bowl of shit and saying "god, I hate corn.. the corn that is in this shit. I've never liked corn."

But we're all in agreeance on this one- football is made by and for retarded people and should be abolished.