Band Practice?

You've probably been wondering for some time, "What do those "Awesome" boys do at band practice?" You've probably been talking about it with your friends and co-workers for some time. While other folks sit around the water cooler talking about Obama's speech on race, or the price of tea in China, you and your friends have been arguing back and forth about what it is that we might or might not be doing when we're in our secret underground practice space, or "lair" as it is sometimes called. Well now's the time that we finally divulge our secrets. Please note that I have NOT obtained permission to expose this highly classified information. But here goes.

This is what happened last night, Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008:

First of all, "Awesome" is run by democracy/mob/confusion/e-mail threads of abstract jokes. We have no leader, per se. So for each rehearsal we appoint (by democracy/mob/confusion/etc.) a Rehearsal Captain. Last night's was John Osebold. So the first thing he did was force us to leave our precious and safe practice space to go get ice cream at one of those marbletop creamery places (that I shall forever associate with sorority girls only because the only one I'd ever gone to prior to this was on the Ave and was always packed with said humans.) Kirk offered $100 to anyone who was willing to take a crap in the garbage can by the door. No one took him up on it, but several (including myself) thought about it carefully before declining. Kirk paid for the ice cream to assuage his guilt over skipping rehearsal last week. The Johns got chocolate glop or something. Kirk got something called Love In The Oven, I think. I opted for strawberry with almonds mixed in.

Next Osebold ordered us to walk down to the Fremont cut and eat our ice cream as we watched the sun go down over the water. We talked about art and watched a barge full of sand go by. We talked about Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. Then Osebold forced us to return to the lair.

At this point Rob and Evan showed up. Then Osebold put us in 2 groups and gave us 15 minutes to make short performance art pieces. There were some restrictions, like there had to be a surprise entrance and some kind of use of "ceremony". My group (me and Kirk and John A) made a piece involving John A using his own spine to dig his grave while he sang a song about putting a peanut on the railroad tracks to make peanut butter. Meanwhile Kirk and I did three movements in slow succession: whisking a batter in a bowl that was nowhere near the whisk, trying to point out where your tooth hurts with a shaking and arthritic hand, and trying to help John A out of his grave while our arms keep falling off. Rob and Evan's piece involved them playing their instruments. Yeah, I guess you can do that. Whatever.

After that, we played some music I think. I didn't actually bring any musical instruments. I just played the one John A was playing.

Finally, we all congratulated ourselves on a job well done and went home, avoiding the Fremont Bridge which was closed.


-David