Band geeks gather in L.A.

Rex, Stan and I were among the thousands of current and former marching band members who attended today's Drum Corps International championship at the Rose Bowl.

All three of us were high school band geeks. I played snare drum and was drum major. Rex played clarinet and saxophone. Stan, who is an accomplished pianist, played base drum and saxophone.
Drum Corps are marching bands that are formed each summer from the most talented members of high school and college marching bands across the country. I've followed drum corps for years and always dreamed of going to the championship.

The Cavaliers of Rosemont, Ill., were among my favorites (partly because of an amazing color guard), finishing in third place just behind the first-place Blue Devils of Concord, Calif. (the home state crowd favorites) and the second-place Cadets of Allentown, Pa., who put on a spectacular show but created a stir by incorporating annoying on-field narration.
My long-time favorite corps, Phantom Regiment from Rockford, Ill., finished fourth with a beautiful show titled "On Air," which featured a mix of old and new symphonic selections including Stravinsky's "Firebird."
I also liked sixth-place finisher Carolina Crown's horse racing-themed show, which was one of the most beautiful in terms of music.
All of the 12 corps in the finals gathered on the field after their performances to hear the judging results.
The drum majors gathered on the edge of the field.
Members of the Blue Devils held hands while waiting for the inevitable. There was no element of suspense as the California corps easily won its 12th championship since 1976, and first since 2003.

Thursday with Stan

Once again, I had Stan tour-guide duties while Rex stayed home and caught up on work.
We started at the lovely campus of the University of California San Diego -- specifically the Eleanor Roosevelt College. I really like the serenity of the modern architecture.
Then we headed to La Jolla Cove where we explored one of these water-level caves. You get to it by paying $4 to a girl sitting at a table in front of the cave entrance inside a tourist shop.
Many steps later we emerged into a fairly compact space that opened to the water.
We saw lots of squawking baby pigeons.
Outside of the cave, we found seals.
Then we headed to Pacific Beach for a taste of quintessential California beach life.
We took this missive literally.

Remember Stan's plush koala from our trip to the zoo a few days ago?
Well, he seemed to pop up everywhere we went. Here, Koala gave us his best porn magazine pose in the bushes.
Here, he poses for a future public service announcement.
I don't know how this happened.
Stan was out of control.
Apparently, Stan needs to eat at least one slice of pizza every day.

Stan goes to the zoo

I took Stan to San Diego's world -famous zoo Sunday, and the kid was definitely in his element.There were polar bears.
And bears and badgers (my friends Robert and Carl - see his blog here - formerly from New Orleans but now of Oregon).
Big ol' turtles.
Stan worked really hard to get just the right picture . . .
Like this one.
Here's a baby monkey fishing.

Robert fed the hummingbirds by hand.

Meerkat sentinels.

After seeing the adorable koalas, Stan ran straight into the conveniently located koala gift shop and bought a plush one with Velcro hands.
He wore it the rest of the day on his left wrist like a prom queen's corsage.

Stan goes to Mexico

We took Stan to Tijuana yesterday, his first trip south of the border.
We were joined by Dan and Chris, Rex's friends who recently relocated to S.D.
Stan's first challenge was changing dollars to pesos.Rex played tour guide, taking us to some of his favorite spots in the city . . .
Including the spherical IMAX theater at the Centro Cultural, a federally funded museum and arts complex.
We took an overstuffed taxi out to the city's edge to visit a newly opened shopping mall. Along the way we saw this church towering over the highway on a cliff.
Back in the center of the city we ducked inside Tijuana's cathedral.

Invasion of the visitors

We have a constant stream of visitors coming through San Diego this weekend. Stan (above left) was the first to arrive and will be staying for another week and a half. He's from Ohio, and he's blowing off some steam on the West Coast before starting grad school at a performance arts college in North Carolina.

Richard (above right) is from Chicago and was in town for a few days of work. He couldn't hide his envy for Stan's iPhone.

More visitors arrive Sunday afternoon.
Here's Stan earlier in the week at play in Imperial Beach.We had drinks Friday night in the top-floor bar of the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego. We had a bird's-eye view of Petco Park where San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds tried unsuccessfully to tie Hank Aaron's all-time home-run record.

Best fortune cookie EVER!

I got this last week after eating lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Bridges and floods

Outspoken New Orleans author Poppy Z. Brite posted these thoughts comparing reactions to the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the New Orleans flood on her online journal, Dispatches from Tanganyika.

"For the past few days, every time I've seen pictures of the collapsed I-35 bridge in Minneapolis or read interviews with the narrowly-escaped or families of the presumably lost, the same ugly thoughts have popped into my head: I wonder if anyone will talk about how stupid they were to trust that their federally built bridge would not collapse. I wonder if anyone will question whether their major route over the Mississippi River should be rebuilt. And the answers are obvious: no, of course not, nor should anyone say these things. Yet we in New Orleans had just as much right to expect that our federally built structures would stand, and to demand that the government make things right for us given that their work turned out to be incompetent. The fact that no one would even consider asking such things about a major American city like Minneapolis just slams home our banana-republic status a little further. We aren't treated like part of the U.S.; we aren't important except when people want a place to party. And it makes us bitter, so that we think about such things when we should be sympathizing with people who are dying and grieving."
- Poppy Z. Brite, Aug. 4, 2007

I keep waiting for some prominent wacko Christian preacher to suggest that the bridge collapse is divine punishment for Minneapolis' domestic partnership registration law.

It's official . . .

The first USA Today Top 25 coaches poll was released Friday, and it confirmed what most pre-season prognosticators have been saying for months: USC and LSU are the top two teams in the country. LSU's placement is the team's highest pre-season ranking ever in the list.

That news came as 105 LSU players reported to Baton Rouge for the start of fall practice. With no meaningful absences and the team looking in top physical shape, all of the elements seem to be in place for a really special season.


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