Tuesday, August 29, 2006

A post as would have appeared on November 13th, 1990, if I had a blog then, could write like I do now, and knew only a moderate amount of information more then I actually knew at the time.

My mother has been looking forward to band sign-ups for years. She wants me to become the next Lee Loughnane, who is her favorite musician for her favorite group Chicago. This only works however if I plan on dating 46 year olds with eleven children. I need to learn drums or guitar if I hope to compete for the cute girls I'm going to meet in middle school. The trumpet will not be my ticket to coolness.

ME: Hey girls, check it out, I sound just like Wynton Marsalis!
GIRLS: Who cares, this guy sounds just like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
ME: Ahhh common! I can play "Under the Bridge" on my trumpet.
GIRLS: Shutup, no-one's going to make out with you until you're seventeen.

A couple weeks ago I picked up my horn. I will contend to the day I die, or at least until this is published on a weblog fifteen years from now - after the internet is invented, that they gave me the dirtiest, most germ filled, ass rottiest mouthpiece available. They must have dipped this thing in the toilet. I would have been better off eating the mixed vegetables in the cafeteria.

So obviously I get sick, horribly sick, freaking pneumonia sick! I miss two straight weeks of school, and my mom, who's a trooper, spends many nights at my attention insuring I remain in a state of non-dead. At one point I was rushed to the hospital well past midnight to discover my temperature was 105°. ONE HUNDRED FIVE DEGREES!!! This is the underside of my tongue not the surface of Venus. What ungodly source was at work in that damned mouthpiece. Damn you trumpet.

I also missed Halloween. No. Mere. Words. Can. Describe. Rage.

I make it back to school on the day that would have been my third band practice. I told the music teacher I was out sick for the last couple weeks. "That's alright," he says, "Just play a C note." What's a C note? And how are you a music teacher? Are you using magic? I'm just supposed to know this or am I missing something? If at some earlier time I had been given the knowledge of how to play any note I assure you that I literally threw it up last Wednesday. At Beethoven's first piano lesson did his teacher just sit there with his arms crossed while Ludwig pounded out "Au Clair de la Lune" without any instruction? No, he showed him how to play a C note first and then he played a fucking C note.

The one thing I did know was that my index, middle, and ring fingers go on the three trumpet keys, and so I fluttered each of them up and down while I meekly blew into the instrument. "No, no, no. No fingers, and blow harder." Oh, that's a C, thanks jackass. When I try it right this time, "No, blow harder." Again. "Blow harder." Again. "Blow harder." This is the gayest thing I've ever done and I drop my pants around my ankles while pissing at the urinal. "You haven't really been practicing have you?" No, you mustachioed freak: I've been sick, I missed Halloween, and my teacher is terrible; I hate you, you bald old man! Though everything after 'no' was pretty much implied.

"Well if you're not going to practice I don't think you should be in the band." And that was it. I got kicked out of the band today. After two weeks and one 'lesson,' hell after one note, it was decided that my services would not be needed. Fine screw you Labarbra and your stupid mouth piece.

Then while I was leaving the band room I could have flicked him off and been like, "And that's a D note!" if only I had actually known that and didn't have to look up what notes put my fingers like that just now.