Flag throwers…pffft
30 Sep 2005 
around lunchtime 
Matt Winckler
The Cavalcade of Bands, a competition where high school bands from around the region gather to compete right here in the Tri-Cities, is being held tomorrow. My sister plays in the Pasco band, so we had originally been planning to spend vast amounts of cash to go see her play. However, we then learned that Pasco is scheduled to play at 0915 tomorrow, and never again through the whole day. hmph. So instead, we went to the free rehearsal at Lampson Stadium on Wednesday evening. It included all the area high school bands, and most of them were good. I must say, despite familial allegiances, that Richland High stole the show. Theirs was a very well done performance.
However, what was not well done (indeed, what is never well done) by anyone was the batan chuckers, or whatever they call those pseudocheerleaders that stumble around the field throwing various glittery things into the air, posing as if they were Hot Stuff, and generally getting in the way of the musicians. It is my firm belief that these human distractions ought to be utterly banished from marching bandom. Watching them throw flags, batans, three-ring binders, and whatever else they can get their hands on into the air never contributes to the experience in a positive manner. Moreover, none of them have any concept of precision or synchronization whatsoever, and so most of the time their actions come across as individualized expressions of clumsiness. And furthermore, with no offense intended toward any of you who might happen to be one of these unfortunate wretches, nearly all flag throwers are either overweight or anorexic, which, in addition to the fact that they are adolescent teenagers, makes their sultry moves all the more disgusting and repulsive.
But I believed all that before going to the show on Wednesday. What really brought it to the forefront of my mind and made me post about it was the particularly disturbing realization that one of the Richland flag throwers is a boy. My heart really went out to this kid. His parents must be tipping hormone supplements onto his Wheaties or something, because I simply could not imagine any high-school-aged boy in his right mind going out there in front of a whole bunch of people and pirouetting around with a pack of pretentious cheerleaders suffering from eating disorders. Personally, I would sooner amputate my right hand using nothing but my teeth than sign up for a year’s worth of flag throwing with a marching band. To this poor misguided fellow’s credit, he didn’t quite get into the whole “private dancer” role quite so much as his female counterparts (thank heavens), but he was out there aimlessly meandering around trying to trip up the flute players nonetheless. The whole thing made me doubly glad we aren’t going to the real performance tomorrow. Wednesday’s rehearsal was not a dress rehearsal, and I don’t even want to think about what sort of uniform they came up with for that kid.
Unpleasantness aside, Emma did a good job playing the tuba.