Friday, October 09, 2015

A House of Follies

As many of you know, my daughter is a budding musician who has been involved with her high school marching band and winter drumline competitions. For many people who perform in such organizations, the next step is to join a drum and bugle corps. There are two major ones in the Twin Cities, including River City Rhythm. As I watched events unfold yesterday in Washington, I couldn't help but think of RCR's 2015 drumline show, which was called "A House of Follies":


It's an entertaining show, significantly more entertaining than the house of follies in Washington. If you have seven minutes to spare, check it out.

Meanwhile, as for what's happening in DC, let's just say this: if you ever harbored the notion that we send the best and the brightest to Washington, you're probably mistaken. 

2 comments:

Bike Bubba said...

Love the flat caps and vests. I never quite understood the appeal of drum & bugle corps, but I sure remember a lot of the people I marched with aiming to be part of one. For that matter, as I get older and more curmudgeonly, the prospect of playing the same few songs for the better part of a year to perform it a few times sounds more and more terrifying, as if that alone would get me committed to Mayo's psychiatric ward at Generose.

(I've got the same basic view of competitive figure skating....it's beautiful and all, but the repeated routines and music could drive anyone to send her ex boyfriend out to kneecap her competition....)

And my take on DC is not that the people going there have no achievements or are stupid, but rather that we've allowed the system to select for people whose genius is in the political process itself and manipulating public opinion. And then we wonder why we get bad policy and scandals. Well, as Deming said, your system is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you're getting....

First Ringer said...

I love the River City Rhythm - we've had them play in the Edina 4th of July Parade for years! Great group.