Mini-band banquet bonanza

Well I promised two blog posts today, so even if I don’t have a lot to say I might as well follow through.

For the past week or so both my parents have been pretty sick. As a result, thanks to still being on vacation, I’ve become a more distinct guardian for my sister.

Which includes being the chauffeur. Which, by extension, meant getting up to drive her to school for zero period.

At 6:00 a.m.

Every day.

Needless to say she owed me a little something. Luckily tonight was her mini-band banquet, a potluck the RUHS Marching band holds halfway through the school year to celebrate the end of the competition season.

If there’s anything high school kids enjoy, it’s gorging on lots of food.

I’m more than happy to mooch.

The unfortunate downside of tagging along to mooch off free food is that the entire event, which hosts about 100 high schoolers and band parents, is held in the small gym on campus.

So imagine a bunch of people stuffed into a hot gymnasium wearing semi-formal attire, walking around on rolled out tarp.

As it turns out, band kids also enjoy breaking the flow of music to do silly things.

Like Fortnite dances.

And singing a Minecraft-themed parody of a-ha’s “Take On Me” en masse.

While it was admittedly hilarious seeing the older parents who have zero concept of internet memes cringe harder than I did, that didn’t stop me from cringing.

In fact, ridiculous high school antics were rampant throughout the event. The most stand-out of which for me being a girl walking around who apparently did not get the semi-formal memo because she wore a sleeveless crop top, leggings and heels.

I know that sounds like I was being a creep and judging what some high school girl was dressed in, but I swear she just stood out that much.

Outside of cringe-enducing high school antics, I suppose I can’t say I regret going. The food was a huge plus, and I have become at least pseudo-friends with some band parents simply because I’m around so often for Alyson. It’s nice catching up with them.

I even chatted with someone who was willing to give my business card out to someone who works at one of the local newspapers around Redondo Beach.

Always networking. Always.

But of course, it was also nice to support my sister.

Even if it meant getting a picture with this real creepy mannequin from their field show in the background.

I assure you that even for someone who was at some of the shows, this guy here doesn’t make too much sense.

Aly only has one more year of this stuff ahead of her (as much as I die inside every time I imagine her graduating high school so soon), so I might as well fill in as much time supporting her as I can before she probably heads across the country for music school.

… Just as long as she doesn’t do so until we finish Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee together.

I’m not letting that one go.

Strange Associations: Irvine band competition edition

Tonight my family and I braved the smoke-ridden California atmosphere to head out to Irvine for the California State Band Championship semi-finals, where Alyson and the RUHS band performed.

I’m not sure whether it’s wrong of me to talk about that while people in areas actually ablaze right now are surviving a horrible tragedy? But the fires have been so intense that the South Bay has seen huge clouds of dust, and we were treated to a bright red sun on the way into Orange County.

Full credit to my mom for snagging this one out the window.

So we might not have it as bad as somewhere like Malibu, to get images like this one I’ve seen circulating out of the LA Times:

An owl sits on the beach in Malibu as the Woolsey Fire approaches https://t.co/9D9meDcUL4 pic.twitter.com/TGMEhBg89i

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 10, 2018

But I still felt like it was worth mentioning.

Now let’s get into the meat of this post, shall we?

… Or at least, that’s what I would say. If there was some to get into.

I’m caught in a bit of an awkward position when it comes to talking about this competition. It’s all about a number of marching bands from across the state coming together to perform musical and visual shows so they can earn a spot in the finals.

I don’t think there’s a monetary benefit involved? Unless you consider a school’s potentially increased willingness to fund an award-winning program.

The problem comes when that musical and visual performance is best captured on video, but we’re not allow personal video recording of the performances because the organization is doing “professional recordings” and wants you to buy their video.

I’m not sure I could feasible argue this is a professional venue, and I’d rather not deal with a headache if it turns out they’re the kind of organization that sues if you break the rules.

So brief pictures will unfortunately have to do.

Like this one I got out of the performance by Troy High School:

The drum major actually did something unique by wearing that cloak and performing the prologue ballet for their show on that guitar there.

It was a bit goofy because the whole thing was leading up to a fantasy love story. But it was different and I appreciated that.

Of course I also tried to get Aly’s band performing their show Imagine, which is a somewhat bizarre blend of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Ironically relevant to me this semester if I hadn’t made that obvious enough already.

However, that’s about as exciting as I can get with this whole experience.

So I figured I would harken back to an older post I did and talk about more strangely specific video game-related associations I’ve had thanks to this competition.

The drive out brought back a memory from over two years ago. Way back to those days when instead of trying to do daily posts, I just wrote about a few things of interest whenever they came up.

Like brand new details about the as-of-yet released Pokémon Sun and Moon.

Boy those were the days, weren’t they? Everyone was so eager to eat up each and every little detail they could about the much anticipated Generation 7.

I miss that kind of game hype.

But now I’m getting sidetracked. All I wanted to say was that the drive reminded me of writing this blog post, specifically the Type: Null portions, in the car.

Which in turn drudged up the chunk about Tsareena and Bounsweet that I wrote in the stands that night.

That’s not where my gaming-centric connections end, though.

The competition is taking place at Irvine High School, where we’ve been here for a different band event in the past.

When we were here last it must have been a few years ago as well, because I distinctly remember playing Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright at the time. In fact I can do you one better and pinpoint the exact mission I was struggling through.

Mitama’s unlocking mission: Paralogue 12, as I looked up.

However… Just talking about that reminds me that I keep putting off that Fire Emblem Heroes post, which is focused on Fates characters.

So I’m going to try and cut my losses by wrapping things up here.

Would only be right to do so with the results. Aly and the RUHS band got fifth place, so they are going on to the finals. Because the top six teams make it through.

I guess here’s to next week when I’ll be doing this all over again!

Proud Big Brother Moments

It’s kind of strange being on this side of the fourth wall when it comes to a high school award ceremony.

…

Which, I now realize sounds a bit dickish to lead off with, as if I’m trying to put more praise on myself for previous achievements?

But I swear that’s not at all the intent.

Because this is a blog post that’s all about my sister getting a sweet Academic Letter tonight!

Or, alternatively, if you prefer vague facial features:

Girl works her butt off with a heap of AP classes on top of doing Marching Band, Jazz Band… And probably like three other bands I’m forgetting off the top of my head.

Because she plays at least 300 instruments.

No exaggeration. I swear.

I’ve certainly talked about her performances and such enough that I’d hope you all would be pretty in-the-know by now. Just gotta update whichever new folks might be swinging around with this as their first post.

Aly actually gets to rub this one in my face, because her time in Marching Band has allowed her to get an Athletic Letter as well as an Academic Letter. Even though I’m not entirely sure what the point of having two identical letter “Rs” that you’re supposed to put on a single letterman jacket is.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned a letterman jacket before.

Do I get to be honorary sports person because of it?

Probably not. But hey, I can fake my way through it.

While I could spend the next 300 words talking about how much I’m proud of my sister, that’d probably get old fast. So I figured I’d talk a bit about the experience of being at the ceremony.

Like I mentioned up top, it was a bit strange being on the audience side of the equation for a big academic event like this. Because I’m always 5ish years ahead of Aly, she usually has to suffer through long ceremonies and stuff for me.

I have to apologize to her now, because god was it boring.

Yeah it was exciting to cheer when Aly went up. But for everyone else? I pretty much just lingered on my phone, texting some peeps and playing my vidya games.

There were a few key points in the event that did keep my interest.

For instance, while waiting outside of the Redondo Union High School auditorium, an old lady walked into the glass panel wall thinking it was an open door.

Which I would laugh way harder at if I hadn’t done the exact same when I was much younger, costing my grandmother a housing complex here in California as a result.

True story. I’ll have to tell it another time.

Another fun thing at the event was watching the PTSA President make a blatantly political statement at the top of this otherwise completely unrelated school function.

It was a harmless point about how “the U.S. will be in better hands in the future,” but boy if it wasn’t jarring and distracting in the moment.

During the actual ceremony itself, there were a few goofs of note. Most notable was one of the announcers mispronouncing “McGonigle.” Compared to the many other last names that he got through just fine which had clear Indian origins (as well as some other nationalities but Indian was the one that stood out), it was hilarious how bad he screwed it up.

There was also one kid who collected his award and danced on-stage before exiting. He was a baller.

Also, I found out that “McCurry” is a last name and that led to me thinking about a McDonald’s signature dish in India. Because apparently I just had India on the mind tonight?

I don’t know, man. Don’t ask me.

I suppose that’s really all I had to mention of note, however.

Proud of Aly. Funny ceremony goofs. Obligatory post-ceremony ‘during dinner’ photo:

Check.

So I think I’ll leave you all on that note. Hope you guys have a great night!

Also, I hope you all return tomorrow for my Fire Emblem Heroes post. I thought the update was happening today, but turns out it’s happening tomorrow so my timing was really solid.

Also, also: There’s my talking about video games just to annoy Alyson in a post all about her moment of the day.

Take that, you.

Musical Space Filler

I’m not sure how I forgot to write this until 11:00 p.m., especially considering I was looking to base it off of something that ended at 7:00 p.m. the whole time.

But if I’m being completely honest, I’m a little checked out right now. So I’m just going to go into the Aly band stuff I wanted to talk about real quick and move on. Try to get something out into the world before midnight.

As school quickly creeps up for me, it also creeps up for my sister. Thus, she and the Redondo Union High School marching band have been starting to rehearse their field show for the year. Traveling around to watch marching band competitions have become a pretty common activity for us since Aly started seriously doing high school band stuff.

We’re so early into things that I can’t actually talk about the show without breaking some kind of contract because something something secret high school band espionage?

I don’t know, it’s all a little over the top in my opinion.

So that picture up there in my featured image is just the band standing in a half-circle doing their pep band songs at the parent preview today.

Because that is what I’m talking about, by the way. The band puts on a preview for parents on what they can expect to see at competitions and such as the year progresses and a show slowly comes into maturity.

It was basically an hour of listening to the band play a few songs that they’d do during football games, then show us the first draft of a couple of overall show things.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected to be able to write on this subject considering I’m not really allowed to go into detail. But hey. I supported Aly and her band stuff today, it offers another opportunity to lament school coming and I have something to discuss that isn’t related to going to the gym.

Which I also did today.

I’m willing to bet that’s a good part of the reason why I’m so tired and out of it right now. So I hope you weren’t expecting anything cognizant and of significance tonight. Because I don’t have it for you.

If you want you can go check out the Gladeo Spotlight I did on the RUHS band director, Ray Vizcarra. That ties into this. I got to meet his husband today and they were both very pleased with the piece I wrote so I have that going for me.

Also something something new job callback.

Look I wish I had something else for you guys but I’m honestly, truly beat. Spending most of tomorrow with my friends for one final summer 2018 hang out as well so I can’t promise anything substantial until Monday when I’ll likely say something about my first day experiences for the semester.

But until then, please cut me some slack. I think I did pretty good with he whole one post a day thing this summer so I’ll just imagine I’m afforded an easy day or two now and then so long as I get something out before 12:00 a.m.

Yeah.

Later, man.