Penn Band meets the workplace

What a game it was last night! Two milestones were achieved:

1. It was the first time in over a decade (not since 1997) that the national championship game of the men's NCAA tournament had gone into overtime (very exciting!), and

2. It was the first time since I've been filling out these silly brackets (c. 2002) that I a) shelled out money to participate AND b) won (half the pool)

I went back and read the fine print, and it revealed that I was entitled to half of the winnings! I'd steadily held first place since the beginning of the tournament, but my UCLA/UNC fantasy bumped me down to (a still respectable) 5th place finish in the graduated points system that many brackets utilize. However, I was still head and shoulders above anyone else in terms of total number of games chosen correctly (47-- how does this number compare to other pools? For perspective, there were only 35-40 people in mine).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now...it's the first installment of a semi-regular series! "Penn Band and the Workplace," or something not quite as lame. Basically, I plan to mention the instances when something I learned as a bando has shockingly paid off in The Real World.

Photo: Wired.com (no individual photographer attribution), 2007.

Although this year's Quakers squad wasn't able to win the league's automatic bid and send 29 of us (plus Greer? Minus Greer? I can never remember) on an extended Spring Break, here is a potentially useful tidbit of information for the freshmen (and newbies...I'm looking at you, Class of 2012): claiming that you made your bracket selections based on your "past NCAA tournament experience" gives you total street cred (if you have a dorky job, like me). Acceptably dorky people/positions include, but are not limited to:

- graduate students (any field, but statistics is probably the perfect one)
- researchers (hard science, soft science, post-docs, lackeys)
- health professionals (physicians, nurses, MAs, health educators)
- computer people (programmers, IT)
- engineers
- people in the financial sector who are forbidden to interact with clients (awkward social interactions)

Why is this gem a winner? Because, short of being this guy, everyone will correctly assume that your "tournament experience" was as a member of a band, dance team, cheerleading squad, or as your school's mascot...but they'll respect you for it regardless! You could be as inept as Palo Alto's infamous tree at playing the bracket numbers, but you can stroke your bruised ego with a passing mention of tourneys gone by. A sample interaction (based closely on an actual conversation):

Dr. Stat: "Lisa...nice picks!"
Me: "Thanks, Dr. Stat!"
D.S. "What's your secret? I went down in flames the other day!"
Me: "Well, being a member of my college band, I had the opportunity to go to three NCAA tournaments, so I saw a lot of unbelievable things unfold right in front of me. Last year in Lexington, we caught the end of the Stanford/UW-Milwaukee game before ours, and Stanford ended up losing, despite the 7'0" twins! I think they're highly overrated, so I picked them to lose. It turns out they didn't, but I knew ("based on my tournament experience" heavily implied) they very well could."
D.S. "Well, I hope you win!" (fabrication)

Of course, if you make many correct predictions, they might assume you've figured out a way to beat the house!

Take-home message from these ramblings: play up your first-hand involvement in college athletics! It doesn't matter if you're intentionally vague about your actual participation because, well, people will put two and two together. And you will be perceived as too cool for school among your fellow nerds.

Monmouth University: Giving out HS Diplomas in School Spirit

As Dr. Kushol Gupta (PHD), writes in his blog, the Penn band travels more than any other band in the country. And last night (Saturday) we were lucky enough to travel to the great institution of higher learning that's known as Monmouth University. (Two part trivia question: which President used the mansion on the grounds of Monmouth U for his summer residence? And what musical that was filmed in 1982 was partially filmed at the same mansion? Answers at end of blog.)

The game was at Boylan Gym, without a doubt the most high school-like gym I've ever been to in my year and half with the Penn band. (Cornell's stadium is a close second) How much like high school was it? Well for one they have banners for all of the championships that any one of their teams has won; the Palestra, on the other hand, only has championship banners from men's/women's basketball and volleyball (ie the sports that play in the Palestra). Two, it only sat like 2,2000, and was in your standard, two sections of bleachers on the sides of the court. And lastly, in the lobby of the gym, there was a bulletin board of their PE requirements (not kidding).

And to be honest, their fans were at the high school level. For one, they had absolutely no presence of a student section until the second half when about a dozen or less students stood up and did a few cheers every now. Instead, adults cheered and I don't mean just clapping after baskets; they were actually cheering during the game with "De-Fense" cheers and the like. But then again, it was just like high school where the parents of the players are the ones cheering. (In fact if you look at their roster, only one of their American born players is not within easy driving range.)

But the epitome of their "high schoolness" was their band. Even though we the Penn Band had limited numbers at the game, we still had more lowbrass (they literally had none and we had a tuba, euphonium, trombone and mellophone each), clarinets, and flutes. The only thing they had more than us was drum sets (1-0). Plus with their white and black striped uniforms they look like the Juventus soccer team. And their actual playing was as bad as their instrumentation and/or uniforms. They didn't sound that impressive at all, which is kind of sad considering they actually have auditions and applications for the group. Also, they play their fight song, which sounds crappy, all the time. Proof that it sucks? It was written in 1997. All good fight songs have to be written at least before the 1950's. Come on!

Another thing that really annoyed me about their band, and in some ways this might have been our Drum Major's choice, but we never got a chance to play our fight songs when the team came out. For some reason their Pep Band always plays songs in the last 6 minutes before the game starts. I have no problem with that as long as we play our fight song when our team comes out. Now I still don't know if they demanded it or if our Drum Majoresident Becca Goldman decided to, but instead of playing fight on as the Quakers entered the court, we sung the song. (Embarassingly, however, very few bandos knew all of the lyrics to our fight song; that shouldn't be the case). The same thing happened with Cheer Penn. Now I think it's unfair if they demand us to not play the fight song since back in the Palestra or Franklin Field we never care if another team plays their fight song while their team comes out if it's at the same time that our team does. Seriously, there's always conflicting fight songs going on. And frankly, there should be. It's a musical representation of the game.

So adding up all of these factors, a high school gym, a less than enthusiastic crowd, and a second rate pep band, and what is the result? The Penn Band steals the show. Maybe it's because everyone was so into the Carolina game and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason , the band kept up a high level of intensity throughout the night. We were so good that we even got another group of minors to adore us. This time it was a group of three boys that must have been around 12-13, right at the age when you starting thinking you're the coolest thing ever. They decided it would be hilarious if every time we did "De-fense" cheers they would say "Sucks, Sucks" right when we were clapping.

But mocking the band wasn't only restricted to prepubescent idiots. Their "Student section" of 12 did a cheer of "he's a freshman" when a freshman got an and 1. But when he preceded to miss the free throw, the band cheered back with "he's a freshman." So almost immediately after the "student section" yelled back at us "bandis, bandis." It was their only creative cheer of the night. (We responded with "we- can-read").

We were so impressive that a Monmouth-associated person came up to Koob, our amazing chaperone for the night, and complemented us. According to Koob:

Yeah, some Monmouth guy in a shirt and tie came up to me at one point and was like I'm from Monmouth, so I probably shouldn't be saying this, but you guys are awesome. He was really impressed with our energy and our constant cheering. Then he asked if he could rent us out. It was pretty funny.

Plus we got a sweet shout out from Vince Curran, the color commentator for the Penn radio basketball games. Obviously I didn't hear it since I wasn't listening to the radio, but Koosh said it went something like "look at the Penn Band dupe the Monmouth player by counting down 5-4-3-2-1 with plenty of time left [on the shot clock]." Thank you Vince, and yes it actualy worked a couple of times.

All in all, although the stadium was pretty worthless, it still was a great game to go to. Especially considering the Quakers finally got a road win!
______________________________________
Starting with this game, I'm going to keep track of all the songs we play in the band. There are going to be two categories of songs. One is songs that our Drum Major calls (this will be the wide majority of songs). There will also be songs that aren't necessarily called by our official drum major, but we play them anyway. As you'll see by the end of the year this category will mostly be filled by one song, Ruff Ryders' Anthem. (18 to Stop, Drop, read link). (Note I'm excluding Penn songs since we play them all the time.)

Songs played as of the Monmouth game:
DM called:

• Land of 1,000 Dances
• Video Killed the Radio Star
• Free Bird
• Sweet Child O' Mine
• The Office theme
• Holiday
• The theme from Gummy Bears
• Hip to be Square

Unofficially called:

• Guns of Brixton
• Ruff Ryders' Anthem

________________________________________
Answers to trivia questions: Woodrow Wilson and Annie

Individualistic Sections and Required Reading

Just a couple of things tonight.

First, in response to Brain Greenberg's post from yesterday, I think it's good to know the development of the sections throughout the last 20 years or so. What's interesting, is that Brian refers to the sousaphones, trombones and "horneytones" as three separate sections. But the fact is, right now all of those comprise one section: the low brass. (You'll need a facebook account for that last hyperlink.) And like Brian implied, the low brass is now the "dominant" section.

Now before you yell at me for calling the low brass dominant, here out my explanation. First off, we are the loudest, so we theoretically dominant the music. But I'm not implying all other sections have inferior musicianship. Also, our cheering dominates during the sports games. But that doesn't mean non-low brass members don't cheer. I'm just saying we're the most ubiquitous section; it might seem we're goofing off in practice, but we're also the section that has asked the most questions, both serious and not, during rehearsals. (Of course Noah's "with repeats?" does inflate this, but it's still true.)

One thing we don't dominate is Newports consumption. That would be the trumpets. (We are a distant second.)

But the important thing here, is that all of the sections have their own role, and that role is important. Just like our songs require different instrumentations at different times, so must the band as a whole need different sectional personalities. Not everyone can be the "rowdy, party" section of the band, because then we'll just end up being like this. (Of course I'm not implying only the low brass has fun.)

Secondly, tonight I interviewed the author of Jumping Through Hoops: Why Penn Wins, a book about Quaker basketball as illustrated by the 2005-06 season. It's a really interesting read, and definitely a must for any Quaker fan. There are some references to the band throughout the book, and the author even said we're "the best band" he's ever seen. Although he followed up by saying not in quality of music, but in quality of school spirit. (At the same time he was a rambling old man, so who knows). Here's the story.

Wednesday Shorts

• As Zach pointed out, there was a big game yesterday between number 1 UNC and Penn. A loud Penn crowd (and an unsurprisingly large, under informed and embarrassingly silent North Carolina contingent) and a red faced Governor at a non-Eagles game, that's how you could tell it was significant.
• Contrast that with the Penn Women's game tonight which featured the band, some screaming elementary/middle school girls and some old folks there to watch Lafayette. (It was snowing but the way the university treats womens' sports like second class citizens is remarkable.)
• Tuesday was also a day to debate whether or not spreading lies ("Duke will without a doubt win the ACC." "Carolina will lose at least 8 games this year.") after a game is funny or not. It is.
• Zach and I are trying to get on a regular schedule (with him updating Tues., Thur. and Sun. and me on Mon., Wed., Fri. and alternating Sat.) so with that in mind I encourage you to only check on my days as my posts are significantly more informative and funnier.
• Friday: A look forward to Ivy Season featuring rankings of EVERYTHING (seriously).
  

Three minutes of playtime

It's been quite a band-filled weekend! Yesterday started with the last football game of the season. The senior show was "Survivor: West Philadelphia" and included swimming across the Skullkyl (why is it that I still don't know how to spell that??) as one of the "challenges." I think it went pretty well, although the jokes were quite a bit longer, and I got dizzy from all the do-see-do-ing (yeah, I don't know how to spell that either) my section (the clarinets) was (were) doing for organized chaos. Right after the game, we all ran over to the Palestra to play back to back basketball games. Maybe it was 10 hours of band, but it was worth every minute (especially since it meant that I wasn't doing homework).

Part of the band has started quoting from Spiderman throughout any sporting, social, or other event possible. Right before Peter Parker fights in the cage match pretty near the beginning of his time as Spiderman (although I believe he attempts to go by the name "The Human Spider" at the time), his opponent warns him that Parker can't leave, tells him he has "three minutes of playtime," and makes this horrible frightening face. Those are the three or four lines that I think I've heard 20 times (at least) this weekend. Of course, every time it's said, it must be done with all kinds of gestures and facial expressions (most of which I'm convinced are going to give me nightmares). It's really pretty comical at first. I always laugh a little the first time I hear it, but by the fifth or sixth time during a game, it starts to lose something. Even so, it's just one of those band obsessions, much like the theme song to "The Office" that is perpetually stuck in my head--with lyrics sung by Joe, of course (argh). Gotta love it.

Today CBS filmed us at Franklin Field for a documentary of some kind that will be on at the end of the year. Other than the 40 degree weather (with rain!), extra 90 minutes of playing, and random dancing during the cadence, it wasn't so bad. Actually, I have to admit that it was kinda fun, and definitely nice to be (at least somewhat) recognized as a group. But really, I could have done without the fist thrusts. That was just a little too cheesy, in my opinion.

<3