Episode Guide
If you're new to Blonde Champagne and here for The Ohio State Marching Band, bulk up on a complete catalogue of all OSUMB-related posts in chronological order. That's right: Your day just got ineffably better, and way more mellophone-intense.
Dotting the Living Hell Out of that i: Healing Served on a Sousaphone
It begins.
A Belle, a Leprechaun, and the Ohio State Drum Major Walk into a Bar
The bar is located on the corner of Transference and Compensation, in the tourist section of the Village of the Clashing Iconography.
"I, For One, Welcome Blonde Champagne's New Twirling Overloard"
Why can't I, who shies and kicks away when faced with anything resembling a 90 degree angle in this world, leave any of this alone? Also Assistant Drum Major Matt The Badass' terrifying badassery is made manifest. The human race is grateful.
Pre-Ohio State Interviews Novena to St. Francis de Sales, Patron of Writers (Minor Markups Included)
I am having my usual pre-interview freakout; for they are everyting horrible about a job interview combined with everything horrible about a first date, whipped together with the creamy nougat center of everything horrible about every single business meeting ever. Until now.
I Got 99 Problems But a Lack of Drum Majors On the Speed Dial Ain't One
In which we officialy meet Jason Stuckert, his mighty predecessors, and some of the Drum Majors-in-training of D Row. In these violent and troubled times, it is my civic duty to announce that if you, or anyone you know, experience an emergency in which the services of a drum major are needed immediately, I am a valuable national resource.
2008-2009 Drum Major Josh Halter does more warming up than the entire Roman Empire did in 1500 years.
It's a blessing I spent a decade or so studying every nut, bolt, and urine dump portal on the space shuttle, because it's the only roughly comperable thing to learning what it takes to be in this Band.
What You Don't Know Probably Isn't Very Interesting Anyway
I made it very clear from the start with everyone I speak with that they have utter "off the record" control, because I am not out for a salcious bundle of TMZ updates on what a pack of college trombone players are doing with their Saturday nights. Frankly, the everyday world in which these band members operate, this business of playing to exhaustion, strutting to perfection, and shrugging over it all with a glass of 2% milk and a stack of underbuttered pacakes is far more interesting anyway.
What We Have Here Is the Ability to Communicate
I ACCEPT your presence in my virtual world, Claudia The Campus Sister and Friends!
Jason The Drum Major Participates in Take an Author to Work Day
With snow choking the campus parking lots and Charlie Sheen waving a machete from atop a hotel roof somewhere far away, Jason Stuckert took me to see his office. The meteors were thus summoned.
"You'd be surprised, MB, at what there's room for in your life."
In Which Matt the Badass' Badassery Cannot Be Contained in Just One Post
There is marching on after a cut on the side of the head, and then there is marching on after a cut in the chest from which the still-beating heart has been yanked out.
Does Paul Anka See Where Matt The Badass Is Coming From, With The Integrity?
He'll be the Sam Malone of Columbus, running the coolest, friendliest, most get-better bar in town, tooling around I-71 in a 'Vette, being his own Roadhouse bouncer and nailing photos of various self-created Script Ohios on the red brick walls.
Your local neighborhood Drum Major has a physics lesson for you.
Everybody Sit Down and Shut Up: Josh Halter, In His Benevolence, Puts You Some F'in Knowledge
Professor Josh Halter settles an online debate... from his iPhone. The word "torque" is used. Also "moisture."
There is no Ohio State University Marching Band at the moment. It dissolves after its last performance of the fall, and, not unlike The Kracken, lies dormant until needed.
You and Me Could Write a Band Romance
I am wandering, cold, and guideless in Ohio Stadium, and in yet another confirmation of my decision to forego bearing children, I have somehow managed to lose an entire marching band.
What is happening during the Ohio State Spring Game, against that nasty melting sky and tangle of concrete, is utterly beautiful.
Getting Full Value on My Free Admission to Drum Major Tryouts
When the numbers come down, the top candidate is the 2011 Drum Major. Second place is the Assistant. Period. No ampersands, commas, upside-down question marks or do-overs allowed.
As It Happens, If You Like Your Drum Major, You DO Get To Keep Your Drum Major
Repeat.
Jason Stuckert, quite literally Candidate #1, is done and this tryout is now officially about the assistant position.
You Virtually Know Someone Interviewed Within The Virturesphere
I am interviewed about the pending book... in a room in which the AC was off... in southern Alabama... in May.
Despite my wide and ranging history dork career, this is the first time I have been a member of a tour which begins with the words, "These coolers are very important."
Oh, You Thought You Were Safe?
Questions from The Readers about NCAA scandal fun, initiating a new nickname for the old Drum Major, and what's to come.
Part II of The Reader questions
We Roll Tonight to the Gutter Bite
Never let an alumni Drum Major order the shots. Never.
Don't break anything, such as each other.
Josh Halter Claims Suburban Chicago For Ohio State
The first appearance Josh Hater made as Head Drum Major was for a Big 10 Network commercial. Then he forgot to tell me about it.
Giving You Full Value On My Free Admission to Drum Major Tryouts
Ten people competed in Drum Major tryouts. Nine of them weren't too happy with the result. We meet JD Who Gots Game and other baton heart-bandits.
In Which I Am Helpful, and Also Show Instead of Tell
Summer Sessions begin. You wanna be in this band in August? You show up in June.
The refinery which is Summer Sessions
Proper strutting is such a physically taxing, regimented and unnatural act that the first time I saw it done in person, I knew I'd have to try it myself in order to truly know the full spectrum of your average OSU Drum Major's mighty deeds. I also knew that this was going to be ugly.
Rejoice, O Highly Favored The Readers
A guest post from 2005 Drum Major Alex Neffenger
"The right person is always the Drum Major." -1999-2000 Drum Major Matt Bally
Your Assistant, Kyle West, is a bit on the alpha side of life.
When S--t Got Real For Paul Revere
Why this Band? Why me? Why this particular D Row at this particular time? Why now? What if after this gets published, a few hundred people go, "Well, that's very nice," and then we all just kind of... keep going to the grocery and hating the TSA as if it never happened?
Drum Majors love their aerials. Aren't we lucky.
Working on this book is exhilarating, intense, vibrant, intoxicating, life-altering, thrilling, and heartquickening, and I wouldn't wish it on my nearest mortal enemy.
It's not taking up residence in Columbus to tail this Band that's terrifying; it's the execution of the task, after it, because of it. How much fail, how much win? Will it be worth it? Am I worthy of it?
At Summer Sessions, Josh Halter stood there alone atop Mount Alumni, longitude 50 yard line, elevation Josh Halter, and I cannot remember previously seeing a person so excited to Be Judgey.
I had forgotten the cardinal feature of this band: They make it look easy.
Ten months after his death, my father sends some Script Ohio-laden encouragement
Tryouts: The days are long, the rental room ain't unpacked, and the air mattress hates me.
Hear My Thoughts In Every Note
These days, watching the pre-tryout drilling and first rehearsals of the 2011 Ohio State University Marching Band, I've turned to baseball caps and stratums of sunblock. And yet I remain unprotected in a great many ways.
As I suspected, game day was in no way just game day.
The Ohio State University Marching Band is a great big organization, and it plays in great big places in front of great numbers of people. And so it can make great big statements. But just as music sometimes has nothing to do with instruments, a college marching band sometimes has absolutely nothing to do with college football.
When I come into the Band Center’s main rehearsal room each day, twice a day, I must first negotiate the Ohio State University Marching Band Obstacle Course.
Passing Bells and Sculpted Angels
There is no possible comfortable way to hold this hat.
We may now add "rolling up on the Everglades with a parking pass from Ohio State still on the dash" to The List Of WTF Things I Find Myself Doing These Days. It's a long list. There's still plenty of room at the bottom.
It's Hard to Leave When You Can't Find the Door
In this livechat transcript, vital OSUMB matters are discussed, including potential latte consumption, what sousaphones look like on cloudy days, and what one's favorite KitKat flavor says about a girl.
Roll With the Punches, Play All of Your Hunches
Anyone who has watched the formation of Script Ohio, that living irony of flowing curves formed by rigid turns, knows that its true crowning glory is not the dotting of the i...
Showers which were spitting all morning at last dumped over into a driving late summer gullywasher. They carried their instruments from the indoor rehearsal room to the outdoor practice field. The Band calls this "Monday."
Packing and Unpacking, Town to Town Up and Down the Dial
It's two hours to my mother's next dose of Percocet and about twenty minutes before the The Ohio State Marching Band takes the field in Columbus for the Buckeye Classic.
Those who even so much as brush past it, even in a tailgating haze, might not know a quarter note from a Post-It Note. But they do know that this brass-flashing marvel pretty much just shredded the space-time continuum one eight-to-five drill at a time.
Summer Sessions and world's most fearsome moving wall of brass and beating drums
Apparently writing a book about a marching band is a medically diagnosable condition.
This is why I'm writing this book: You're supposed to see new life at the Spring Game.
They call it "ramp."
They did not hear that music. They experienced it.
Recording rock stars
I make a noise! On a flugelhorn! Well away from innocent bystanders!
Where in the world is "Carmen Ohio"?
Never mind... we found it.
Inspirational.
There is The Ohio State University Marching Band an art known as "band hair," the ability to arrange hairclips, bobby pins, rubber bands, gel, and hair nets into a concoction which allows one's cap to fit over a bun so tightly wound that it practically creates its own event horizon. And those clips had better not be pink.
God Loves My Book More Than Anybody Else's Book, Including That Heathen Mitch Albom
Still no such thing as a coincidence.
In an organization hellbent on beating the living daylights out of mediocrity, JI Row arrives early and stays late.
A Year With You's Been Worth It
One year ago today, I wrote this, and my life changed. It changed a lot. It hurt while it changed, but it changed for the better.
Jacksonville, healing, and moving on
At the Gator Bowl, it's A1A, an ice cream cake, a motor vehicle, and me. What could possibly go wrong?
On avoiding the TBDBITL jargon trap, even when I've been trapped in its mighty jaws
The Readers bid a fond, mostly non-toxic farewell to Jason as TBDBITL's Drum Major
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 3:29AM 