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In my ongoing effort to pretend I'm still 23 years old, I spent last weekend with the Harvard Marching Band, for the Princeton away game. I hadn't been on a football field, and I don't think I'd been in a football stadium, since I was in the Yale Precision Marching Band in the late eighties. Yes, I was in the Band. No, I don't know how to play an instrument. I played for a while in the tamborine section, which requires an adequate sense of rhythm and the ability to catch things when you throw them in the air. Then I made my way into the appoggiatura section ("Podges"), which requires designing and "playing" a visual joke instrument. For a while, I played the six-foot inflatable Gumby. When he popped during a particularly cold game, I switched over to playing a stuffed banana, bigger than I was, with a broken violin bow. So, of course, I was incredibly well suited for only one role in the Harvard Band - Prop Crew.
I assume that occasionally they have some props to move around. But my jobs this time consisted of photographing things with my new digicam, kidnapping Band members during field rehearsal, interviewing passers-by on what body part New Jersey most resembled, and dancing around on-field in a tiger suit (typecasting!) during a parody of the Princeton fight song. And even though they hadn't actually gotten me on the lunch list, so that Julia had to share the sandwich with a homeopathic dose of peanut butter on it they'd provided, I felt appreciated.
I hadn't ever cheered for Harvard in my life before, of course, but one of the few things that Harvard and Yale Bandies can share is the ability to make fun of Princeton for thinking that Harvard or Yale care very much about their rivalry with Princeton. And it turns out I do know some of the Harvard fight songs, in part because the Yale Glee Club used to do an Ivy League medley, and in part because they actually do seem to use Tom Lehrer's "Fight Fiercely" as a fight song. And I can hum along to Psycho Killer as well as the next person. Anyway, Harvard won, and although I've been told that "the Band always wins" it's certainly fun to cheer when things are going well.
But one of the real reasons I went to the game was to experience the festival of undergraduate joy that is the ride back to Boston on the Raunch Bus. Loud music with insightful lyrics like "You's a Ho" and "I wish I were queer, so I could get chicks", oddly colored punch made with alcoholic ingredients of unknown provenance consumed out of refilled water bottles, some rather brazen serious snugglebunnies, and quite a few loud renditions of bus songs with randomly offensive lyrics and bad jokes about the sexual proclivities of fellow band members. I had forgotten until then about the existence of the song "The Freshemen Down at Yale Get No Tail".
Julia really wants me to come with her to the Harvard-Yale game this year. I don't think I could walk into that stadium on that side, though. I'd be afraid of a Tourette's-like leak of old school spirit at an inappropriate time, barking like a bulldog and yelling “Boola Boola” or something. And suddenly, when no one expected it, I might start playing the tamborine.
( A postscript. )
I assume that occasionally they have some props to move around. But my jobs this time consisted of photographing things with my new digicam, kidnapping Band members during field rehearsal, interviewing passers-by on what body part New Jersey most resembled, and dancing around on-field in a tiger suit (typecasting!) during a parody of the Princeton fight song. And even though they hadn't actually gotten me on the lunch list, so that Julia had to share the sandwich with a homeopathic dose of peanut butter on it they'd provided, I felt appreciated.
I hadn't ever cheered for Harvard in my life before, of course, but one of the few things that Harvard and Yale Bandies can share is the ability to make fun of Princeton for thinking that Harvard or Yale care very much about their rivalry with Princeton. And it turns out I do know some of the Harvard fight songs, in part because the Yale Glee Club used to do an Ivy League medley, and in part because they actually do seem to use Tom Lehrer's "Fight Fiercely" as a fight song. And I can hum along to Psycho Killer as well as the next person. Anyway, Harvard won, and although I've been told that "the Band always wins" it's certainly fun to cheer when things are going well.
But one of the real reasons I went to the game was to experience the festival of undergraduate joy that is the ride back to Boston on the Raunch Bus. Loud music with insightful lyrics like "You's a Ho" and "I wish I were queer, so I could get chicks", oddly colored punch made with alcoholic ingredients of unknown provenance consumed out of refilled water bottles, some rather brazen serious snugglebunnies, and quite a few loud renditions of bus songs with randomly offensive lyrics and bad jokes about the sexual proclivities of fellow band members. I had forgotten until then about the existence of the song "The Freshemen Down at Yale Get No Tail".
Julia really wants me to come with her to the Harvard-Yale game this year. I don't think I could walk into that stadium on that side, though. I'd be afraid of a Tourette's-like leak of old school spirit at an inappropriate time, barking like a bulldog and yelling “Boola Boola” or something. And suddenly, when no one expected it, I might start playing the tamborine.
( A postscript. )
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