Reedies and Timbal Tortoises

Sunday was the annual end-of-semester party at Reed College, where traditionally the Lions open and the punk-vaudeville marching band March Fourth closes. It was also commencement day at the University of Portland, where I am a biology faculty member. So really, by all rights I should have been at U Portland. I really should have. I intended to go. I was thinking about it. All my senior research students were graduating, and I really wanted to see them graduate. But, comparing the two head-to-head:

Format:
Univ. Portland: A Catholic mass; followed by long speeches
Reed: Naked girls oil-wrestling, and a mechanical bull; followed by the two rowdiest parade bands in the city
(PS - for those who don't know Reed - the naked girls weren't hired strippers. They were just students who
decided that they would prefer to be naked, on this beautiful spring day. Business as usual, at Reed.)

Food:
Univ. Portland: Communion wafers
Reed: Unlimited free beer. (and not just for the band - for all students of drinking age, too. jeez.) And Italian sausage.

Pay:
Univ. Portland: Pay to rent faculty regalia.
Reed: Get paid.

Activities for me:
Univ. Portland: Sit for three hours
Reed: Play third surdo and timbal! For an hour! With the Lions!

Time spent with those I care about:
Univ. Portland: 3 secs watching my students zip across the stage and disappear forever into the throng
Reed: Hours and hours drinking and playing with my friends

So at mid-day there I was winging my way down south to Reed. Sorry, UP, I love you and all, go Pilots, but, this was really no contest.

So it was a fantastic gig. We had a huge contingent of Lions - the free beer is always a big draw at this annual gig - I guess the naked girls don't hurt the cause either - and the rest of the semi-drunk, semi-naked Reedies were the best audience imaginable. The type of elated, leaping, half-drunk, party-crazy crowd where, as soon as you play your opening hits, they start screaming and all leap to their feet and come racing over to the band. The kind of crowd that samba was made for.

Man, those kids have a lot of energy! I don't think I could jump like a pogo stick for an hour straight like that. And after all that oil-wrestling and mechanical-bull-riding, too - those kids have stamina.

This was also the debut of two new samba-reggae pieces for the Lions (using the term "samba-reggae" very loosely to mean "anything with timbals"). They went pretty well! The dancers looked fantastic! It was a lot of fun! Except for one little thing! So, I was playing timbal, right? So, the group has plenty of great timbal players, but I'm starting to think we have kind of a Bermuda Triangle effect going on in the timbal section. The Bermuda Triangle effect is that, out of any 3 Lions timbal players, only one of them will remember any given timbal break. The other 2 timbal players just disappear, poof! They fell into the Bermuda Triangle. Meaning, they switch to another instrument just at the wrong moment, or put down their drum to get a drink of water at exactly the wrong second, or saunter away for a little rest at just the wrong moment, or, surprisingly often, just stand there like a deer in the headlights when a timbal break happens. Their internal compasses go crazy, they get disoriented and they fall right into the sea. I've seen it happen time and again. Bermuda Triangle.

You would think that a timbal player would take special pains to learn a timbal break, wouldn't you? Especially since, till a few weeks ago, we only had ONE timbal break and it was only ONE measure long. So you'd think a timbal player would make that a top priority, to review that one little measure, wouldn't you? You'd think that would be the one measure where we would be rock-solid, wouldn't you? You would be wrong! Like I said, Bermuda Triangle.

It would be funny if it didn't strand me so often in a clumsy solo. I'm just about the worst timbal player in the section, and that one-measure break rolls around and - ta-da! Kathleen solo! There's some kind of moral in here, the Tortoise and the Timbal - I'm surrounded by brilliant timbal hares, but they're always snoozing under a tree when the timbal break rolls around. And so I plod on past, Tortoise-like, and get my little solo all to myself. Take that, Hares.

Unfortunately, I play the solo at Tortoise tempo.

(At least it's making me work like hell on timbal now. It's my top practice priority these days.)

Luckily, the Reed kids didn't notice a thing and they just kept on jumping and screaming and dancing and clapping, right through the wobbly timbal bits. Manic little semi-naked pogo sticks, the lot of 'em. Love those Reedies.