3.01.2009

Holy shit, it's March.

Hey y'all. I know it's been a lil' while since we started this ol' blog up and took it around the block but it's only because we've been hard at work perfectly crafting an extensive recap of Dollie Day and highlights of Tree Week. As the regular basketball seasons end, we start gearing up for that wondrous elusive thing known as airtrips. Making its debut this year is a brand new incarnation of Red Vest Band that I like to call SuperVest by virtue of both Pac 10 tournaments being in the same place (Some place like 400 miles south. The Band's never been there before though). Other potential locations include Los Angeles AGAIN, not that we're complaining though, and Berkeley, and St. Louis if we're really lucky for the women. There's another longshot though, and it barely even bears mentioning, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyway. If the men get really lucky they might make it to the Final Four, and in that case maybe the Band could swindle its way all the way to NEW YORK CITY. I know, it's a pipe dream, but is it wrong to reach for the stars?

We'll keep you posted on those events as they occur and worry not, the official Dollie Day/Tree Week (now press approved!) digest is coming.

2.16.2009

Dollie Day has passed

and it truly was magnificent. There were roasted pigs, mudslides, and no casualties. I would provide a full recap right now, but I still sort of have a midterm to do. T'will be forthcoming though. So everyone keep their shirts on, unless your shirt was already off. I don't know what you're wearing when you read this blog. You're probably naked you sick sick person, not that the human body is anything to be ashamed of. But yeah. In the meantime, I'll just leave you with this. This is how the Best Sexion celebrates Dollie Day.


photo courtesy of Robby Beyers
pig courtesy of the Tööbz

2.13.2009

It's coming...

So, Dollie Day is almost here. Maybe you're thinking, "So what?" Maybe you're thinking, "What the hell are dollies?" Maybe you're thinking, "Where the hell am I, and why am I missing a shoe and covered in mud?" I can answer the first two for you, but I'm clueless as to the last one (though the answer is no doubt hilarious).

To put it succinctly, the dollies are the band's beautiful 5-woman dance-team/ninja-strikeforce/crime-fighting-league/best-friends-forever. They've got hearts of gold and fingernails that shine like justice. Here's a picture (by veteran band photographer Al ponce) of them in action.
As you can see, they're lifting off for their traditional pre-football-game-flight-around-campus (bet you didn't know they could fly). Anyway, the dollies are awesome and we love them. Unfortunately, the fairy godmother who grants them their powers only allows them a one-year term. We tried arguing with her about this, but we quickly learned that it's a bad idea to fight with a creature who can summon an army of animated pumpkins and who wields frightening powers of transmogrification.

That brings us to Dollie Day. Dollie Day is the annual celebration wherein we choose new dollies for the next year. There is much cavorting, some caloohing and calaying, a bit of dancing, and a brutal Mortal-Kombat-esque fight-to-the-death tournament that yields 5 survivors to be awarded the title of dollie. I won't spoil all the details for you, as there is sure to be some exciting blog action soon (maybe even live-blogging?) covering the events of Dollie Day.

-Aaron

2.09.2009

Now where were we?

Hey there blog faithful, it's been a little while now hasn't it? Indeed a full 2 weeks has passed since I last paid a personal visit to your computers, but what a 2 weeks it has been. Let's take a bold unparalleled step and start the rundown from the beginning. And this blog post is extra special because it's my birthday today, no.20, and yes, for those of you wondering, I am celebrating by drinking 20 fifths of gin today. I'm already on to no. 14. It's been quite an experience.

But enough about me and my liver, I'm sure you all would rather hear about the Band and its liver. First things first though, let's all have a moment of silence for our chances to go to Vegas. It turns out the Kal band had just a few more people with automatic Skype-calling scripts and they won the so-called contest (more like a CON-test if you ask me, I mean wait). They said they'll be back next year. Maybe this time they'll let us know it's happening more than 2 days ahead of time.

But now to the perhaps most important event of the past fortnight, BANDQUET. Remember your team/marching band's banquet at the end of the year? Well ours is just like that, except there's also a D in the name. Forgoing our usual rehearsal, we all converged and celebrated not ending Band for another year, clad in a style of dress we like to call rally formal. What's rally formal? Well, it's a little bit like pornography (in more ways than one). You can't define it, but you know it when you see it. I, and a few others, donned the personas of the primary characters from Reservoir Dogs, complete with cap guns and copious amounts of hair gel. I was Mr. Orange, which meant throughout the night, my shirt became more and more saturated with blood (or in this case, Hawaiian Punch).

Perhaps the most significant events of the night, though, were Most Improved and Best Sexion, respectively, which come in the form of Ernest and Julio Gallo jugs. Most Improved went to the Trumpz, who also came away with best Big Game project for building this
A certain assistant athletic director in charge of facilities, though, said it was simultaneously a safety hazard and not allowed because it was attached to the building so now it ignominiously rests in the rehearsal hall, but I digress.

Let's get to the moment that everyone was waiting for, which was the winner of the coveted Best Sexion. In a victory for justice, morality, and puppies, it went to those Regents of Rhythm, the tööbz, aka my sexion. Though somewhat unexpected, we knew it was a long time coming, and express thanks goes out to the past few sexion leaders for whipping us into shape. If you were there, you surely would have heard me exclaim multiple times that this is what winning the World Series felt like. It truly was.

Not content to let the week go by without more debauchery, the following weekend delivered the Band Ski Trip (with equal emphasis on both words), which was great fun, despite the iniquity of being forced to drive on Golden Bear Trail to get there. If this post lacks the usual requisite amount of trite pop culture references, its because my brain is still recovering from that weekend. I mean, you would be slow too if you made a snowman out of cocaine and then snorted it.

Other than those two events, it's been primarily a steady diet of basketball, some more victorious than others, all proving to be valuable experience as the band trains to get its heckling into tournament shape (*fingers crossed*), except for yesterday which brought the Band the San Jose Spring Festival Vietnamese New Year's parade something or other. It was a (figurative) riot to play for hundreds of puzzled Vietnamese immigrants while simultaneously holding up the parade every 2 minutes. Though this year lacked the highlights of Storm Troopers and the Davis Band stealing our songs, we still got to serenade a Catholic church with "Hell" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers and laugh as the bonz missed the golden opportunity to play the French national anthem during "All Right Now", though the tribute to imperialism was not a complete abortion. They managed to muster up "Hail Brittania", but like New Coke, it was still a poor substitute for the real thing.

This week is just your average week, but that's good, because the band needs time to prepare for what some deem the best day of the year, DOLLIE DAY. I don't know about the other sexions, but the tööbz have an epic project planned. What's that Jimmy? You want to know what it is? I'll tell you when you're older. And in the smoothest possible transition (we take lessons from our women's basketball team) next week is the week in which the Band is subject to the greatest amount of smug derision by the larger populace, or as you know it, Tree Week, where the band celebrates arbor day for 5 straight days. I'm sure the Deadspin commenters are foaming at the mouth.

1.26.2009

EXTRA EXTRA. THIS IS A BLOGMERGENCY

The Band could be going to Vegas. BUT WE NEED YOU TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. I'll let Mr. Embedded video take care of it all.

1-(888) 717-9725
THAT IS THE NUMBER. CALL BETWEEN TUESDAY JANUARY 27TH AT 7 PM PT AND WEDNESDAY 28TH AT 12 PM PT. CALL AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. APPRECIATE OUT SARAH PALIN JOKES BACK WHEN THEY WERE STILL RELEVANT. SHOW THOSE WEENIES FROM KAL AND DAVIS WHY THEY'RE SAFETY BANDS. YES WE CAN.

1.23.2009

A few quick bullet points, IN BULLET TIME

*cue Vivaldi's Spring*

Why hello there folks, and welcome to Masterblog Theater. I'm Shotgun, and today we'll delving into a few delightful short stories in our ongoing series on the Band.

  • FIRST, as our manager's birthday present to himself, and through the good graces of SBAB, we are proud to announce that the Shak now has an A/V system. What what what?? That's right folks. Now we can blast Thunderstruck through the entire reinforced concrete structure. Oh 'tis truly a glorious day. What's more, our rehearsal hall now has a projector and giant screen. We are still debating which piece of cinema deserves to christen our precious system. Personally, I've been lobbying for The Emperor's New Groove 3: The Groove's Return to Stella. That or Office Sluts 9.65, a true classic.
  • B. The tree was featured in a compromising photo on the sports blog most blamed for the nation's decline, Deadspin. (Article found here) Being the ever faithful PR that I am (what's that, boy? Someone's blaming us for 1982 again? And Billy's stuck in the well? Well, let's go!) I sent a letter to the editor providing some context, as well as gratuitous Simpsons references, and it turns out the old chap is a local and even frequents the Oasis. A good fellow I should say. I like the cut of his jib. He ran the letter on Deadspin (right m'yah), and we may be doing further correspondence.
  • Gamma. Both basketball teams won yesterday (Huzzah!) keeping the men's' tournament dreams alive and further discrediting the notion of parity for the women. The men take on Oregon State at home tomorrow, though this PR won't be there, for I t'will be on dorm ski trip to Tahoe, which makes me doubly sad because I had a whole host of Obama-related heckles I was planning to level at the coach. Ah well, I'm sure 6th Man will pick up the slack.
And with those quick li'l blog nuggets I bid you adieu as the Band goes to play at our squash team's first EVER home match. The acoustics should be incredible. Bandquet is imminent, approaching on the horizon, and surely looking like the apocalypse to Beefeaters, the eating club that is lending its space to us. We only hope that this time around there won't be any bollard-related casualties.

Until then,
Courage

1.20.2009

The embedded YouTube action JUST DOESN'T STOP

And as day goes into night and on the eve of this historic moment in American history, it's Comrade Shotgun here with a Weekend Update, though unlike the Jimmy Fallon days, ours actually has jokes. For example, why did the robot cross the road? Because it was carbon-bonded to the chicken (Yes, I did just reference the movie version of Lost In Space, which incidentally, almost caused my house to burn down, but that's a story for another day). Back to matters at hand, in the natural perfect scheduling of basketball season for the Pac-10 (take that SEC!) this weekend featured both men's and women's games vs. and at Kal, respectively. (By the way, respectively may just be my favorite adverb.) The men's game was a real thriller that featured a freakishly large band. The women's game reminded me of Flinstones Chewables in that it was a bitter pill to swallow.

HOW-EVA, STEPHEN A. SMITH IS HERE TO SAY THAT THE BAND ALWAYS WINS. Indeed both of these games feature the only quasi-illustrious Kal Band, which though bigger at Stanford than at their home, still managed to be half the size our band on both occasions. And while we surely enjoyed their version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" imagined as a pre-Renaissance dirge, our band definitively prevailed for the weekend because the Kal Band skipped out on our usual post game skirmish. We thought this was a punk move. If you're going to chicken out on a fight, at least come up with a legitimate reason for it, like Eric Cartman did.


Nevertheless, we entertained some Kal fans on the way out of Haas Pavilion, and some forward-thinking individual (this is California after all) took some cell phone video of it and posted it on the YouTube, so here it is for your viewing pleasure, especially some bitter old man commenting during the beginning. Probably just mad because he forgot to take his Metamucil before going to the game.


Today, we celebrated MLK day (which, by the way is A-OK) by rallying all the interested ProDos (that's Prospective Dollies, for those not compelled to speak in abbrevs.) marking the official countdown to Dollie Day, oh what a day. More on that in due time. Though right now, we'll just content ourselves with the anticipation towards BANDQUET and the awards for Best and Most Improved Sexion. The odds favor CS106A, but Math 51 is making a strong push. Personally, my money's on Econ1A as a sleeper pick.

Until then, remember kids, don't talk to strangers, as long as you're fine with marrying your cousin.