failing like never before

Band Geeks

The assisstant director of our marching band fowarded this out to everyone quite a while back. I figured that since I'm stuck for something to write about, I might as well post this.

Hello,

Season 5 of the hit show Beauty and the Geek has begun casting and several members/students of your organization have suggested we contact your department to help us get the word out and reach the best possible people for the show, as traditionally our best cast members have come through referrals.

If you are interested, or anyone you know is interested please contact me for further details. I'd be glad to answer any of your questions, all applicants must be at least 21 years old.

In the past, we have had a Rubik's cube champion a speed chess champion, MIT's Pi recitation champion, a rocket scientist, Professors, and many other highly intelligent, highly skilled men on the show.

We are also looking for someone who is a marching band member for this upcoming season...

We look forward to coming to your school and meeting you and making season 5 the best cast yet!!!!!

I have also attached a flyer, if you could post this in your group that would be great or forward to anyone you think would be an ideal fit for the show.

Remember, last season's winners won $250,000.

Once again, thank you to all of your students who have been emailing us to be a part of the show, and suggesting we get in touch with you. We appreciate the interest!!!!

-- DJ

I'd also like to provide my thoughts about this e-mail.

Firstly notice that male college students in marching band are automatically considered "geeky." At my high school, students referred to marching band members as"band geeks," (a fairly common term I think in high schools across America) a term which aptly described most of the marching band (notice my choice of diction, the adjective "most"). I think it was originally meant to be an insult, to file us away into a degenerate subgroup, but we learned to embrace the insult and wear it proudly as a badge. "BGs," our director used to call us. But when the group in question grows so rapidly that it soon encompasses almost 5% (approx. 100 out of 2000) of the student population, a procrustean method of categorization becomes quite useless. A stereotype, no matter how accurate will always have its exceptions, and while the ratio of deviants (I do not mean to belittle or insult these people, rather to simply indicate that they deviate from the social or imagined norm) to regulars within the group remains constant as the group grows, the actual number of deviants will grow with the group.

My college marching band is much larger then my high school band, and so, the term band geek becomes even more inaccurate (that is, the actual number of deviants has increased with the size of the group). Also, I would like to note that in high school, many marching band members chose to remain within the "band geek" domain without every leaving it because nothing else in school interests them nearly as much. But in college, students are exposed to more subjects and they begin to take a greater interest in areas outside of band. And so, they begin to venture outside of the comfort of their regular group, choosing to associate more and more with those who share their academic interests. Marching band quickly ceases to dominate the bulk of their time and thoughts and becomes simply an extracurricular activity.

This is by no means a description of all members within the group, and as I mentioned before there will always be deviants within every group. Even in college there still remains those with vestiges of the "band geek" mentality. Nonetheless, I think that the writer of the e-mail above received very few responses, if any at all, to his e-mail. Because by the time they reach college, very few marching band members are still the "band geeks" that this "DJ" remembers from their experiences in high school.

The point is, is that people change, they grow up.

That being said I found this e-mail to be quite humorous, and there were a few people that jocularly told me I should attempt to become a part of the show. I told them I wasn't old enough.