It must be really disappointing to be hoping to join the band and then find out it's only open to people who like doing stuff like this.
Tiggles is apparently a sexual nickname, which is new to me. Also they misspelled cunnilingus.
7: Oh, well. We still have the potato salad guy.
What's geeky about this? It comes off to me like frat emulation. And I don't think the songs have the right subject matter to be called filking.
12: Stereotypically a person in a school band is called a "band geek" despite no other evidence of geekery.
This may have been the first field in which the word "geek" came to replace "enthusiast", actually. Now you have basketball geeks, car geeks, economics geeks, etc.
This may have been the first field in which the word "geek" came to replace "enthusiast", actually.
Magic the Gathering? Chess? Maths (as in the kids who did olympiads)?
But those are actual geeky pursuits.
As is playing a musical instrument, traditionally, unless it's a guitar or drums.
Presumably the French horn players are the kinkiest.
15. Actual geeky pursuits surely involve biting the heads off live chickens. Anything else is metaphorical.
I'd also dispute "horny pervs", which to me implies some kind of Caligulan environment. Pretty much everything described seems to have been about dominance and humiliation. How about "creepy assholes"?
20: It seems to be sort of an Animal House environment. Too bad they aren't just horny pervs. I like horny pervs.
OK come on what the hell Unfogged. Yes, imagine the horrors of signing up for the greatly educationally important thing that is *the band* and finding out that it is "sexualized" and apparently a bunch of stupid fun for its members. I mean I guess if you had actual complaints from actual female or gay band members that they felt horribly harrassed it would be one thing, but you all are siding with the investigation prompted by a "concerned parent" worried about sexually explicit nicknames in a completely pointless college activity?
If you read the article in the Columbus Dispatch that is linked at the bottom of the page linked in the OP, it says there were two reports of sexual assault.
Was any of that mentioned in the OSU report itself? I didn't see it on a fairly quick read, or indeed any mention of student-driven complaints.
24: It's a concerned parent who was prompted by their unhappy kid.
And really, I think mildly prudish kids shouldn't be shut out of extracurriculars. There's organic nicknames, which are one thing, but this looked like you couldn't participate in the band without stripping, faking sex acts, getting a dirty nickname and so on. None of those are a nightmare if everyone's doing it for fun, but you shouldn't have to fake an orgasm to be allowed to play piccolo while marching in formation.
27.last And certainly not while sitting in your younger brother's lap. Ick.
26: It was in mentioned in a footnote. It's clearly not the focus of the report.
Presumably you could also qualify by having a real one.
26: Footnote 7 on page 12. Actually one sexual assault and one sexual harrassment complaint.
Second, an incident of sexual harassment by an Athletic Band member of a fellow
Athletic Band member occurred in March 2013. Significant concerns were raised at the time about the manner in which
Waters responded to the March 2013 incident. Both Legal Affairs and this Office had to intervene with Waters to ensure
Waters reverse a decision that, if not corrected, would have led to a possible violation of Title IX. Specifically, a female
Band member alleged sexual harassment by a male Band member, and Waters initially decided that both individuals
would be excluded from the next Band trip
I wonder how much of this bullying was done by the women and how much was directed at the women.
I mean it's not even clear that any of this was involuntary or that you *couldn't* participate in this totally extracurricular activity if you didn't join in. And, the band itself is obviously co-Ed and run by both men and women. I mean sexual assaults are one thing, but the report itself is pretty clearly responding to sex panic by someone who didn't like the particular culture of a college group which was pretty fun for a bunch of other kids. I don't know that the University has an obligation to protect the sanctity of the college band from prudes.
We still love ourselves!
What do Ohioans love most? Ohio, The Buckeye State and the Best Damn State in the Land. In a study done by Movoto Real Estate, that looked at social media and how many people had "liked" their own state, the state with the most pride is Ohio. (No, it's not Texas, promise.) According to the study, 55 percent of Ohio residents liked their state on social media. The place with the least state pride goes to good ole' sunny California. Even through winter's cold, Ohioans still love their state.
Some of the nicknames (listed) are indecent, but most of the nicknames aren't listed; safe to assume that the report only listed the worst ones. Ditto the "tricks" which mostly seem pretty mild by, for example, rugby player standards.
I don't know that the University has an obligation to protect the sanctity of the college band from prudes.
If there's only one band I think it probably does have such an obligation, since the oversexed kids can blow their oompahs in the band and then go and blow each other elsewhere without interfering with the prudes. On the other hand, if the college can support two bands, one can label itself decadent and depraved and the other upright and god fearing and it's all jake. They can compete against each other.
I mean it's not even clear that any of this was involuntary or that you *couldn't* participate in this totally extracurricular activity if you didn't join in.
I think the report makes it clear that the hazing was quasi-official (e.g., the quiz addressed to 'Rookies' generally), and took place in venues (like the trip bus) where it couldn't have been avoided. Yeah, someone might possibly have been able to refuse to play along and not get thrown off the band, but they couldn't have gotten away from it, and it's still shit that would qualify as a hostile environment if it were in the workplace.
Totally extracurricular or not, a Big Ten marching band is a big-deal official college activity, and it's not unreasonable at all to expect that a student should be allowed to participate without being sexually humiliated.
35 -- (1) and (2) seem way overblown, particularly taken out of context and put into a report like this ("sufficient to constitute harassment" on the university's analysis just means a generally sexualities atmosphere regardless of the consent of the participants or a sense of things being fun, probably correct as a legal matter but I'm not super interested in the legalities here). (3), if true, is a real problem, and obviously if the coach is covering up assaults or specific bad acts he should be fired.
You're being kind of weird about this, Halford!
"Sexualities" in 40 should be "sexualized." To 39 it's precisely the idea that the sexual environment of a college band should more or less match that of a workplace that I'm resisting, but that the OSU report seems to adopt.
It's the workplace for the director of the band.
To make it personal, this would have kept me off the band (I probably wouldn't have complained -- one hates to spoil other people's fun, particularly as an insecure college student -- just not joined if I knew what it was going to be like ahead of time, or quit when I encountered the hazing), not necessarily because the level of hazing described would be traumatic, but that it would be enough to render the activity not fun at all. I don't particularly have any relevant moral objections, but I don't like being humiliated, and I really don't like watching other people be humiliated.
And that seems like a shame. Inexplicable as I find it, people care a lot about marching band, and shutting people out unless they're willing to parrot obscenities on command is pointlessly shitty.
Epic troll bro
And epic bro troll.
I systematically avoided anything to do with marching or "pep" bands, unless I could be dead certain the only aim would be anarchic disruption of whatever sporting or other event was at hand. So that allowed me to easily avoid all this crap. Marching bands attract martinets like overripe fruit attracts fruit flies, the entire enterprise is completely repellent to me. That said, I agree with LB if this band is the only game on campus they're idiots for letting things run riot like this. Also find it pretty striking how consistently Halford you argue for noncoerciveness in this kind of situation, seems to betray an empathetic blind spot. Large co-ed groups of 18-22 year olds socially dominated by white guys, somehow always equates in your mind to mutual orgiastic licentiousness with everyone rapturously embracing the race to the alcohol soaked bottom, anyone who might have a problem with it must be a prude. This seems at best silly.
To 39 it's precisely the idea that the sexual environment of a college band should more or less match that of a workplace that I'm resisting, but that the OSU report seems to adopt.
Curious -- would you feel the same way about the football team? Heavily sexualized hazing should be all right? Or is there a distinction between teams and the band that you're making?
I mean, this kind of thing seems like it'd be fine for some random bullshit club, so long as no one was complaining about having been harassed or made to participate involuntarily. It bothers me when it's a high-status official kind of thing, at which point implicitly excluding the prudish seems messed up.
Halford, under your scheme, are horribly racist and misogynist frats harmless? Those blackface parties are totally optional, dude.
Also, what LB said in 45.1
Agreed with Knecht and LB. This isn't an informal club. If it were a bunch of people who regularly got together to play music together just for fun, and who also had a fratty ambiance then it wouldn't be any of the admin's business unless it crossed over into sexual assault. But here, if you want to be part of a major university supported student organization, you're required to deal with this stuff, and while I'm sure many, and quite possibly most of the people found it fun, including the women, nobody should be required to deal with it. And as LB suggests, there would also be self-selection since people who hate this shit would be likely not leave.
Honestly, "I don't want to participate in band because I don't like their pervy hierarchical culture that they seem to enjoy" seems like a perfectly reasonable response for some people but also just not that big of a deal at all. OK, do something else. It's not like there aren't a lot of other choices, even choices involving playing instruments, that you can participate in as a college activity.
I agree with 50 as far as it goes.
Besides everyone knows if what you seek is lots of mutually consensual hot teenage action the regions youth orchestra overseas tour is where it's at.
55: There is a huge prestige factor involved in being in the marching band. I admit that I didn't really understand why, but you can't really compare it to some campus music club.
It's not like there aren't a lot of other choices, even choices involving playing instruments, that you can participate in as a college activity.
Have you no pity for the committed but demure sousaphone player? What outlet is there for the sexually conservative glockenspielist?
57: Moby has lived in Columbus. He knows!
The sousaphonist can join one of those anarchist brass bands that are popping up everywhere, probably.
55: get back to me when any of those other options are regularly featured on national TV broadcasts.
Musically, what's the anarchist equivalent of a 'march'?
I was in marching band in high school (a sexually moderate glockenspielist, at that, although the vibraphone is much more fun to play). I wasn't interested in continuing with it in college--by junior year high school, it was mainly just a social club and an excuse not to do athletics--but some people get really into it (including the intrinsic hierarchical bullshit). There's no real direct substitute for it.
Honestly, "I don't want to participate in band because I don't like their pervy hierarchical culture that they seem to enjoy" seems like a perfectly reasonable response for some people but also just not that big of a deal at all. OK, do something else. It's not like there aren't a lot of other choices, even choices involving playing instruments, that you can participate in as a college activity.
What? There are zero other choices for playing french horn as a college activity. Good lord.
As the leader of a college club I became aware sometimes that new people weren't fitting in at the social gatherings, and tried to figure out what to do to integrate people who wouldn't naturally be friends with the existing groups of friends we had. The alternative is to say "Fuck off if you aren't the right sort of personality", which is OK for a fraternity because the only thing that unites them anyway is having parties together.
So does this mean that that character played by Alyson Hannigan in American Pie was an accurate portrait of people who attend band camp? Who knew?
There are zero other choices for playing french horn as a college activity.
It's not just that. I've spent nearly all of my adult life at universities that place an absurd level of emphasis on one or more sports team. Ohio State is the only place where the marching band was something the students or the alumni would give a shit about.
I agree that there's no precise equivalent, but, come on, it's a marching band. "I had to give up on my lifelong dream of 'dotting the I' because I didn't feel comfortable when 'Mushroom' stamped people's faced with a penis stamp" is just not that big of a deal.
I mean look if I was an OSU lawyer I would give the same tired kind of analysis you see in the report and I guess it's their fault for pretending that band is a meaningfully educational activity in the first place. But come on, it's a dumb voluntary extracurricular pointless activity for dumb college kids trying to have fun.
Presumably the French horn players are the kinkiest.
Nope.
Also, my cousin played French Horn in a college orchestra.
69: If you were a real man you would be posting that on the comments to the Columbus Dispatch news story!
Actually, probably should subsitute "troll" for "man" in that sentence.
For example, are there any other marching bands that you can get a state-issued license plate for?
I want to see Halford's ranking of college extracurricular groups by the extent to which they constitute a "big deal."
OK, 73 is crazy and does change the analysis somewhat. Still, there is no way that complaining kid and complaining parent aren't whiny prudes.
Under Halfordismo, faking an orgasm will be a condition of taking part in any group activity.
Well this thread was certainly successfully trolled. To be successfully trolled myself, I will note that the report makes sure to point out that the band is -- and historically always has been -- heavily male-dominated. So it certainly seems like maybe the people who are not excited about the hypersexualized environment do quit the band.
But come on, it's a dumb voluntary extracurricular pointless activity for dumb college kids trying to have fun.
Is there anything wrong with drawing the line at significant college funding? Maybe not any use of college resources -- I guess the Band of Depravity could use practice rooms or whatever without bothering me. But it seems to me to make a big difference if we're talking something that a bunch of kids are doing of their own accord as opposed to something where OSU is paying salaries and buying instruments and uniforms and so on. Once we're in the latter category, I think a reasonable level of decorum should probably be enforced.
Musically, what's the anarchist equivalent of a 'march'?
The whistle gets blown by consensus.
Minor Mishap Marching Band at the Renegade Craft Fair
Link fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fORk0CGhAb8
78: at this point I think Halford has even managed to troll himself.
77: the All Blacks are well ahead of you there.
I'm reluctantly OK with something like 79, maybe having a salaried university coach/director is the line, certainly if you get college credit for it you can draw the line there.
Under Halfordismo, the resistance will consist of free love chamber groups, the French hornist, pianist and violinist in a passionate threesome, on the run, faint brahamsian motifs in ragged fragments drifting past on the chill rising from the cold, damp March maquis...
Still, there is no way that complaining kid and complaining parent aren't whiny prudes.
Yes, probably also a loser, pansy, weenie and party pooper.
Band of Depravity
Band of Bro's.
What about this English college sport team product that I saw referenced on a TV show the other day. Clearly unacceptable official university involvement in sexuality?
Actually, I think the Stanford band is the closest thing going to an anarchist counterpoint to the typical regimented band. (Although they (and hundreds of other marching bands) are probably busy today burning copies of their off-color songbooks.
The sexuality is not the issue, the bullying and hazing is the issue.
Yes, my self-righteous friend, but 90 is clearly at least arguably not a purely "voluntary" activity either and I'd bet almost anything that the Warwick rowing team has some hazing rituals and sexually explicit songs.
88: Interestingly, that one seems to be a response to insufficient official funding -- they started selling naked pictures because they needed the money to keep the team running. I think they're a commendable group of young people, and the men particularly showed praiseworthy initiative in a manner that is relevant to my interests.
Also, "Jewoobs" is probably antisemitic.
91: I was kidding a bit in my last comment -- there perfectly well might be something objectionable about it. But you haven't linked to anything showing that there was anything involuntary or harassy going on there ("Do I have any volunteers to pose for naked pictures for the fundraiser" doesn't bother me in at all the same way as "Do this embarrassing thing because I'm in charge and I can make you" does).
If there was hazing going on there, I'd object to that too, sure.
French hornist, pianist and violinist in a passionate threesome, on the run,
There are few things sadder than a pianist on the run. They try so painfully hard, but they can never get more than a few feet before the pursuit is on their heels.
It's pronounced "Yevoobs". Common Rhaeto-Romansch name.
85 And if a group of students want to form the Baroque Orgy Quartet where every practice and concert ends in a period costume fuck off with the players and selected guests, knock yourselves out. Any students who complain should be told to buzz off. Same goes for the naked D&D group. Why Halford thinks this is the same thing is incomprehensible.
What about "you won't feel really comfortable on the rowing team unless you also participate in the naked calendar"?
Honestly, "I don't want to participate in band because I don't like their pervy hierarchical culture that they seem to enjoy" seems like a perfectly reasonable response for some people but also just not that big of a deal at all. OK, do something else. It's not like there aren't a lot of other choices, even choices involving playing instruments, that you can participate in as a college activity.
Don't most bands involve scholarship money? Not full-ride money like athletics, but maybe a few thousand or so annually.
from the cold, damp March maquis
WWII era resistance movements supposedly had an insane amount of fucking going on, which makes a lot of sense.
95: You think I wished for a twelve-inch pianist?
97 There was a naked D&D group? Why wasn't I told about this?
Even if no salary is being paid, student organizations potentially get lots of university funds. (My preferred extracurricular had buckets of travel money.) It's reasonable to ask for a fairly high level of inclusivity when the university is funding the activity.
Halford's just bitter cuz he's only now realized he completely missed out on the rapturously orgiastic college club of his dreams by not taking up viola at age 10.
103: The budget for the band is a million dollars.
95: try being a harpist on tour. Regular millstone, the harp.
And boy it is rough on the fingers to try and strum a millstone day in, day out.
Let's not be needlessly inflammatory by talking about grain-related things.
I don't think the mere fact that a group receives college funding should be the cut-off (I mean, obviously it can be). But student-run groups should be able to receive some funding and support and still do what they want. Scholarships for participating in the activity should clearly be a cut-off, and I guess reluctantly that a million dollar per year program with its own state license plates and paid employees can exercise some more control.
110 seems plausible, but who knows. I only vaguely recall people in my college band but I'm pretty sure they were annoying.
I was in my college scramble band. We had an obscene songbook! I think I have the WordPerfect file on a floppy disk somewhere. But we also had *two* buses, designated The Quiet Bus and The Singing Bus, for the comfort of a largeish fraction of the band didn't like the raunch. It helped of course that this cohort was large-ish, both genders, various levels of seniority, and felt free to speak up. (Presumably some people chose the Singing Bus for social reasons and cringed through the whole experience? Is that even a problem?)
If you asked me at the time I'd have said: the band is avowedly welcoming and inclusive and proud of it. I'm sure we had inclusiveness failures we were too insular to even notice. No hazing though.
knecht *still* can't find the orgy ... also, thinks violists play in the band???
110: plus: almost all dudes. Conjecture: nerdy organizations that are overwhelmingly male where any women who show up are instantly, enthusiastically sexualized are not hotbeds of raptorous (het) orgying.
But we also had *two* buses, designated The Quiet Bus and The Singing Bus, for the comfort of a largeish fraction of the band didn't like the raunch.
I guess really this solves much of the problem right there, although WHAT IF YOU ONLY GET TO DOT THE I IF YOU RIDE ON THE SINGING BUS??
I don't always guess, but when I do, I guess reluctantly.
"Experience is the comb life gives you after you have lost your hair."
So, most useful on your back?
"Experience is the comb life gives you after you have lost your hair."
I'd like to see an interview with the guy below (from the OSU band wikipedia page) about all of this:
In 2013, 51 year-old Kris Tikson made the band, more than 30 years after graduating from OSU.
My God, Kris Tikson was actually a 51 year old woman who was in the OSU band in 2012.
There is a huge prestige factor involved in being in the marching band
Don't most bands involve scholarship money?
I had no clue that either of these was true, and I was in marching band in high school. It never even occurred to me that I might continue it in college.
I mean did 51-year-old-woman Kris Tikson find that some stupid raunchy nicknames prevented her from being named most inspirational band member in 2013? No. And it looks like the band is open to alumni, including grad student alumni, so maybe some of you could join.
123: Is it wrong of me to wonder what her band nickname was?
My undergrad alma mater does not have an "i", except in "university". If everyone showed up, the band was large enough to spell out "university" in Braille. Dots for everyone!
Having moved 30 miles east of my location yesterday: my god, what did they do to Hyde Park? This is the nicest hotel room I've stayed in in at least two years, if not more, and the surrounding block looks more gentrified than I would have thought possible.
||
D.C. Peoples,
I have two improv friends coming to town Sept. 27-30 who need a place to stay. They're performing in an improv festival near 14th & U but would be happy to be anywhere with a couple of couches near a Metro stop.
They're friendly and funny chaps.
Anyone have room . . . in their hearts?
|>
the surrounding block looks more gentrified than I would have thought possible.
Racist.
the band was large enough to spell out "university" in Braille
Someone should bookmark this thread for when Halford's daughter turns 17.
||They're all Mexicans actually||
133, 134: I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but I do reflexively bristle at comments of the form "You're going to get more sexually conservative when you have a teenage daughter to protect." Presumably the heiress to Halfordismo will be raised in the aggressively crass manner her father expects.
136: I took it more as, "Presumably Halford will not dismiss his daughter's putative future complaints about sexual harassment/assault as 'prudish whining'."
Oh, go fuck yourself JRoth. I've been very clear that I'm not actually talking about condoning sexual assault.
135 is pretty great, except that it's horrible.
135 is amazing. Holy shit. You can't beat Florida at this game, no matter what.
First rule of Band Club: Boys will be boys.
Second rule of Band Club: You do not whine about Band Club.
138: Huh? I was parsing 133 and 134 for LB in 137. I wasn't arguing about you at all. If you want to tell someone to fuck off, it's Sir Kraab.
No, I think Sir Kraab was making a joke. You were accusing condoning of sexual assault, which is fucking ridiculous. The whole point is that the conduct described in the report (except for one incident shown in a footnote, which incidentally was prosecuted and resulted in the offender being expelled) was not sexual assault, and in fact was not even obviously the subject of complaint of anyone at all besides a single student's parent (the only complainer mentioned in the report).
I do reflexively bristle at comments of the form "You're going to get more sexually conservative when you have a teenage daughter to protect."
I don't bristle but I am nonplussed at the ubiquity of this particular notion. I was on a very congenial project team a few years ago when this subject came up, and people who thought independently on many other subjects took it as a law of life. Didn't care to mention that I'd loaned my teenage daughter a Suzie Bright book the previous week.
I'm commenting because it's Friday afternoon, and while mine enemies haven't perished by the sword, they have at least gone home for the weekend.
Sounds like you at least wounded them.
Kevin Drum has a new tabby cat. It's no Inkblot, but I suppose it'll do.
Oh, I thought he'd acquired it through his mother, but on rereading you're probably right.
I wasn't suggesting that Halford condones sexual assault, but I wasn't entirely joking about the future. It's not that I think Halford will automatically become sexually conservative but that he may have different notions around hostile environments and social exclusion.
If Halford Jr. is raised properly and sees this as all in good fun, Halford will support her. If something goes terribly awry and HJr. is so uncomfortable with the hazing rituals for her school's nationally recognized Crossfit Carnivores that she drops out, he may sing a different tune.
I'd loaned my teenage daughter a Suzie Bright book the previous week.
That's awesome.
||
Turns out my lab-mate had a vial of supertaster strips. Turns out I'm a medium taster, although it tasted pretty darn bitter, so maybe I'm a supertaster with a really high pain tolerance? Anyhow, I'm relieved I'm not a non-taster.
|>
Just like the guy in the They Might Be Giants song.
The real test of Halford's parenting is whether he allows his children to study non-band instruments thereby paving, nay subsidizing!, the way to their future participation in orgies, baroque clothing optional.
I knew I shouldn't have given up on the piano.
My mother still gets wistful suitors from her (very competitive) high school marching band. Apparently the trips were all sexed up but severely chaperoned. Also, mom was a hottie. (French horn!)
hot instruments, in no particular order:
French horn
bass clarinet
'cello
viola
double bass
vibraphone
bari sax
koto
hurdy-gurdy
The piano is not un-hot, and neither is the HUMAN VOICE
157: Thanks, neb.
158: neb/Tom Waits slash fiction contest starts now.
Re: 157
I dispute hurdy-gurdy.
Koto is hot, though.
What about the glass armonica? Bone Machine's Conundrum? Simeon's Simeon? The stylophone or the Zeusaphone?
Late to this one, but...
you shouldn't have to fake an orgasm to be allowed to play piccolo while marching in formation
New mouseover text?
I had several friends in college who were in the marching band, and from their stories the atmosphere sounds pretty similar to the OSU report (though probably not quite as hypersexualized or coercive, and certainly more gender-balanced). All the people who talked to me about it seemed to like it just fine, but of course there's no way to know how representative they were. I hadn't really thought much about any of this until now.
Anyway, "horny pervy geeks" certainly did describe that band, which colored my initial read of the OSU stuff. On the other hand, they sure as hell didn't have license plates or a million-dollar budget.
The comments on the Deadspin thread suggest that every band was pretty much more or like this, without seriously bad consequences. But I guess that's going to change for the better since with the inevitable changes following the report these collegians can put distractions aside and focus on what's really important about being in a marching band.
166 --I don't think I knew anyone in that marching band in my time. I do recall them seeming to have some whole different world focused around their band, and also kind of scaring the hockey players with how into the hockey games they were.
168: Both of those impressions are entirely accurate IME. The band really was basically their whole world.
By the way, on a related topic, if you're roughly my age plus minus 5 years or so, let me just say that American Pie: Reunion is just an incredibly depressing movie, especially if you watch it on cable with insomnia. It assumes that you have been so deeply into the American Pie characters over the years that you are excited about seeing them over a decade later becoming mysteriously old, decrepit, and filled with ennui.
I'm pretty sure no one's that into the American Pie characters. The original movie was a major cultural touchstone for people my age, though. I haven't seen any of the sequels.
I was in marching band in HS, near OSU and in fact modeled on it, inevitably. We played Across The Field every game, and imitated a fair amount of their schtick. I'd ushered OSU games as a boy scout, so I was familiar with all that and knew it when I saw it.
Really band was the only school-related activity I participated in, and it filled what would have been a huge hole in my social adaptation or experience. It's due to having been in the band that I actually had any of the typical HS experiences, or knew much of anybody, of either sex. So it's a subculture that accounts for all of my HS memories.
I belonged, and worked at belonging, but always thought the rituals and traditions were lame and mediocre. Despite that, irreplaceable memories.
170: Isn't Orange is the New Black semi-explicitly (in the narrative rather than sexual sense) an American Pie reunion? Only for two characters, I suppose, and not necessarily the two you'd care about, but surely better than what that movie came up with.
173: Huh. You mean Jason Biggs and Natasha Lyonne? Or is there anyone else from AP running around?
It really is the most depressing film ever, though. To watch American Pie: Reunion is to realize that they have wasted their lives, you have wasted your life, the past is awful and embarrassing, the future worse, that brief moments of apparent happiness are pathetic, and that they, you, and everyone else is despicable, and that there is no hope except death.
174: I think just the two of them, yes. But I also think I only watched American Pie 1 way after the fact and don't have any emotional connection to it, so I'm really not the person to ask about any of this. I agree with the last part of Halford's description as it pertains to my life, certainly.
175: So it's an Ingmar Bergman movie?
I haven't seen any of the American Pie movies, and most of the discussion I remember hearing about the original one at the time was about the boy-fucks-pie scene that they showed or heavily implied in all the advertisements, so I always kind of had the impression there wasn't much else to it.
178: That's the scene people (especially people who haven't seen it) often focus on, but there's way more to it. It's a pretty recognizable, though exaggerated and cartoonish, version of the experience of teenage sexuality as experienced by a bunch of horny virgins.
Not that that's something that most people actually want to (re)experience, but if you're in the midst of it yourself it's nice to see a movie you can identify with. Most teen comedies are much less relatable, IME.
I liked the part of "Not Another Teen Movie" where Molly Ringwald tells the kids how pointless it all is. Also Randy Quaid was great in that movie.
177: Towards the end, life is more like "De Düva".
I really liked American Pie. It seemed generally non-shamey and pro-female-pleasure. And funny.
184: Yes, that too. Just miles ahead of most other movies in the genre in many respects.
(Which is not to say that there aren't any aspects of the movie that seem problematic in retrospect, because there certainly are.)
88. What LB said, plus:
1. There's a fine old British tradition of unlikely people posing naked for fundraising calendars;
2. Nobody's showing any naughty bits (unless you think arses still count as risque in the c.21);
3. There's no suggestion that anybody's making them do it as a precondition of being in the team.
I was heavily involved in marching band in HS (drumline captain! band president!), and I thought I'd do the pep/scramble band when I got to college, but it turns out they (the drumline, anyway) were singularly terrible at playing music. So that was a big turn-off. No idea if they were also into hazing, but they definitely weren't into sounding good. (Oh, snap.)
So instead I started writing for the snarky alternative student news magazine, where I met a lot of people I'm still good friends with. And then my senior year, I played in a small-group jazz trio (for school credit! [one credit hour/semester]), which was awesome and our "professor" was a semi-famous jazz dude, who would wander in during our practices and give us compliments and pointers.
In conclusion, every school should have a shitty scramble band, thus channelling reams of aspiring musicians into the worlds of snarky writing and jazz.
Oh, also: I'm pretty sure that marching band students are getting school credit. It's a band class, just like band class in high school, with an incredibly burdensome time commitment. And lots of the players are music majors (either performance or education). I don't know how you'd carry a full load if you weren't getting, say, four credit hours/semester for marching in the band. Thus, to pile on, Halford is wrong.
The American Pie series (at least to judge from the commercials. I've only ever seen the first one) seems kind of unusual in that the characters are aging along with the actors in more or less real time. Is there another movie series that does that?
Like Forty-Nine Up, but with more dick jokes?
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I don't care how clear you think it is, the truth about 9/11 is not appropriate date conversation.
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193: I dunno, it's the kind of thing that could potentially set of the "RUN!" alarm, which is useful to have out in the open on the first date as opposed to the seventh.
What do you mean "could" "potentially"?
Well, he could just mean she was just talking about the actual 9/11 conspiracy, not the one involving Mossad, Saddam, and the lizard people from outer space.
I managed to avoid learning who the putative conspirators were, but my knowledge of how skyscrapers collapse was tested.
I'd have thought the identity of the conspirators would be issue number one. Perhaps that's second date material. You should liveblog next time and we'll feed you questions and suggestions.
I'm pretty sure it's your basic "inside job" stuff.
I really wish I could find the picture someone posted on (IIRC) Crooked Timber years ago of someone in a furry purple Shmoo costume holding a sign that said "9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB".
Also, seems like 9/11 trutherism is precisely the sort of thing it'd be good to find out on a date. You want to flush out the crazy as early as possible.
It's like the "what music do you listen to" conversation. You want to sniff out Dead Raven Choir fans early.
I lost one of my best and oldest friends due to 9/11 trutherism. It came as a complete shock to me. Much less so than when he came out to me a couple of years after high school. I'd known him since first grade in elementary school and he was the best man when I married #1.
Ohio State to form task force after band scandal
You want to sniff out Dead Raven Choir fans early.
I would be ecstatic to be on a date with a Dead Raven Choir fan.
