Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

From Columbus, we headed north on Sunday to spend the afternoon at my mom’s place near Toledo.  Then we drove up to Detroit to watch the Tigers play the Angels (wherever they’re from;  the ticket said, “LA Angels of Anaheim”).  We grew up following the Tigers in the 50s and 60s, cheering for the likes of Norm Cash, Rocky Colavito, Al Kaline, Bill Freehan, Mickey Lolich, Willie Horton and Denny McClain, the apotheosis of which was the 1968 World Series victory.  So the Tigers game Sunday was a sort-of nostalgia trip.  Except the Tigers no longer play at Tiger Stadium - they now occupy a combination ballpark and theme park called Comerica Park.

The park affords wide-open views of downtown Detroit, and on this gorgeous night it was pretty sweet:

Click any picture to enlarge

When I was working in Detroit for a short period in the late 70s, the Renaissance Center was the beachhead around which the city was to be revitalized, and had just opened to much fanfare.  It’s been through more hands than a B-movie starlet since then.  Its construction was spearheaded by Henry Ford II, and when I was there, Ford occupied much of the office space, and I think the building bore the Ford logo.  I was surprised to see the GM logo on the building Sunday, but I now learn that GM bought the center a while ago and has put $500 million into its renovation.

No irony here!

Tiger manager Jim Leyland went to my high school and was 4 or 5 years ahead of me.  A star athlete, he went by the name “Jimbo”.  I believe I was in the 8th grade, chubby, struggling socially and with poor academic work habits, when my math teacher started calling me “Philbo”.  I disliked it then, but only later realized what a mean sort of taunt it was.  Of course, it stuck with me throughout high school, but it faded in significance as I found my place a little, and I even had a little fun with it.

But it’s not about me, it’s about the job Leyland has done with the Tigers this year in what amounts to a homecoming (Detroit is about 45 miles from our home town).  I haven’t really been a fan of any baseball team since the late 60s, but September will be an interesting month for the Tigers, and I’ll follow along with more interest than I might have.

On a sad note, I must report the loss of a highly-valued companion during the course of this trip. On the way back to Perrysburg after the game, a couple of us implored our designated driver to navigate with alacrity to a comfort station. Once parked, in my haste to be comforted, I apparently kicked my Canon S2-IS out of the van. Upon returning, the serenity of my comfort was curtailed when they told me someone had backed over the camera. It was toasted, but the memory chip was still good, which is why I can post these pictures.

Later in the week, in Milwaukee, I was shopping for a replacement, and saw that bestbuy.com was within $5 of the lowest mail-order price, and that I could pick up my new Canon S3 IS from a local store that very day.  You’ll see its work soon enough.

Last weekend flew by, and I hardly spent any time online. I see that certain criminal elements failed to heed my offer of amnesty, and that summer is still missing and about to grace milk bottles coast to coast.
I’m in the midst of a whacked-out travel itinerary that, after flying home to Seattle from Detroit yesterday (Monday) afternoon, now has me on a morning flight today (Tuesday) back to Milwaukee for a mixture of work, a board meeting and (gulp) golf. More about that in another post. I had made my reservation for the band reunion quite a while ago. Then my client scheduled a board meeting this week, and changing my original itinerary to SEA-DTW-MKE-SEA was just about the same cost as the two round trips I’m embarked on now and, to tell the truth, I was happy for the evening home even though it means more flight time. Also on the plus side, I get a couple thousand more miles toward 2007 elite status should Northwest Airlines survive.
The band reunion was a bit hectic, as usual, but once again a lot of fun. To recap for the handful of you who aren’t my relatives, parole officers or court-appointed psychological evaluators, I was in the marching band when I attended Ohio State, and thus am allowed to participate in the alumni band reunion held each year at an early-season football game. Between 600 and 700 of us attend this event each year to renew acquaintances, and to play and march in both the pregame and halftime shows. In order to present a show that we won’t be ashamed of, we are very busy Friday night and Saturday morning rehearsing.
Friday night, we have a sit-down music rehearsal where we play through all the show music and review our formation charts. It’s interesting how quickly we start sounding reasonably good. It helps that there’s a core group in Columbus that plays together all year. (But don’t you have to wonder at a local culture that wants fight songs played at weddings and funerals?) Here are a couple of videos from the rehearsal:

Buckeye Battle Cry Click to play (5.3 mb)

Carmen Ohio Click to play (6.0 mb)

Saturday morning, we have to be in our seats for a final census about 7 hours before kickoff. This kills us on days when we have the usual 12:30 kickoff, as that translates to a 5 am start time. This year, however, ABC made our game a 3:30 pm regional telecast, so we got a reprieve to 8 am. That’s still early, considering that we’ve usually stayed out late Friday night catching up with each other. The Saturday schedule is as follows:

• Music rehearsal 8 am - 10:30
• Outside for marching/playing rehearsal until 12:30
• Quick lunch, then assemble in St. John Arena, the old basketball venue, for Skull Session, an open-to-the-public dress rehearsal at 1:30
• Form up & head to the stadium for the pregame show.

You can get an idea of the range of ages at the reunion from the photo below, taken at our outdoor rehearsal. Just from my personal perspective, there were no women in the band when I was in it. And, with regard to the fellow pictured, there’s a haunting, understated eloquence in the “42, 46-48″ on his jacket, and all that is implied in the caesura of that comma:

Click any photo to enlarge

While the alumni band members straggle and saunter from the end of one run-through to the next, the student band arrives for its rehearsal with us in style:

Click to play (8.5 mb)

Two very dramatic moments occur during the Skull Session rehearsal/performance. One is a fairly recent addition to the ritual. In an attempt to acquaint the players with the myriad components of what makes a football Saturday at Ohio Stadium, Jim Tressel has been walking the team through the Skull Session and having one of the captains give a short speech. The arena is always full, and the crowd always appreciative. The second is when the varsity band enters the arena to an up-tempo cadence. Since the crowd is laden with band parents, siblings and SOs, the response is deafening:

Team Entrance Click to play (8.8 mb)

OSUMB Entrance Click to play (7.2 mb)

Somewhere in this sea of red, we’re supposed to form up and march to the stadium.

After our pregame show, we had to wait on the sidelines for the flagraising and the playing of the national anthem. During the anthem, I noticed this group of women doing some arcane dance routine. I asked one of my bandmates what they were doing, and he said, “They’re doing signing. For the deaf…and for the dumb (referring to me).”

The following series of pics were taken by someone (thanks, Mark!) sitting in the stands. I picked out the photos that had me in them, and you can follow the arrows to find me.

Damn! We’ve got “diagonals”! That means our vertical and horizontal spacing is spot-on.



Gotta love that halftime score!

I don’t know which of you guys stole summer, but when I went to check my calendar today, it was gone.  I won’t ask any questions if you return it by midnight.  If you don’t, I’m comin’ after you with both feet.

I’m in Columbus now, in preparation for our alumni band performance at Ohio Stadium tomorrow.  I flew overnight to Detroit on Wednesday night, and met up with my brother & SIL at my mom’s houseThursday.  We drove to Columbus today. 

We have a music rehearsal tonight, and tomorrow we’ll go outside with our charts and grope our way around a practice field to prepare our show.  Fortunately, they keep things really simple formation-wise, so it only takes a couple of hours to polish it up.  The complicated stuff, the entrance to the stadium and the Script Ohio drill, we already know from our shared tribal memory.  By this evening, I’ll be glad for the time I’ve spent down in the basement trying to toughen my lips up a little. 

OK, off with my horn and my camera, and perhaps I’ll have a little video for you tonight.  In case you’ve never seen Script Ohio performed, you can watch a video of it here.  It’s about 20 megabytes, so don’t try it with dialup.