And he's off!!!!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to officially announce that as of yesterday morning (Sunday), I am alllllllllllllllllll set to go.

Go?

Go where?

WHY, MADISON, WISCONSIN OF COURSE!!!

That's right. I will be joining a large contingent of VIP's from Drum Corps Planet in their "section" at quarters, semis and finals. If you are going to Madison, please make sure you say hi to the guy in the bright ass Hawaiian shirt. THAT WILL BE ME!!! I'm committed to wearing colors that will make Cozy Chops from down south seem tame, and Sam Signornelli blush in embarrassment. I would like to tip my official DCP baseball cap towards the owner and publisher of DCP John Donovan for making this trip a reality for me. What started as a half-baked "you wanna go?" question in a recent I.M. session with me went from a "oh come on, I can't afford that" to "well, maybe this would work" to "hang on, let me check with my mom...uh, I mean wife" to "HOLY CRAP!!!! I GET TO GO!!!!" Pretty interesting what life is like--I just hope WWIII and fricken wait until AFTER finals. Of course, I was hoping WWIII would wait until after Revenge of the Sith came out, too...so I'm hitting a home run in the "Holding Off WWWIII" department.

I'm VERY excited to be going. Now for those of you that are not familiar with my history, for the 3 years I marched in drum corps (85, 86, and 87), World Championships were at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. I'm pretty familiar with the Madison area, and it's pretty important to me. Also, I went back in 1992 to finals for vacation with my buddies and co-workers at the time Phil Mortensen and Pete Perez. We stayed at the dorms just across the street from the stadium. Pretty ghetto, but we didn't care. Anyway--it's going to be very cool that I get to go. As a matter of fact (small world moment here), I'm getting free housing back there. I write drill for Hesperia HS up in, well....that would be Hesperia. Gee, thanks Turner--that was profound. The director there is Shane Sherrodd. Shane is the younger brother of Sean. I used to be Sean's boss at Knott's Berry Farm in the Security Department, and we used to carpool for the graveyard shift. I'd go pick him up at his house in Fullerton at 11pm, we'd start our shift at 1130, and then leave at 7:00am the next day. We were pretty good friends, but as in life, sometimes things get in the way. I quit Knott's and moved on to the OCFA, got married. Sean got married, stayed at KBF for a short time, but then moved on to Disney and started getting into hotel security operations. Anyway, here we are 12 years later, and he's the head of security for Hilton Hotels in Wisconsin, and I'm...well, I'm still a putz. But he's letting me crash at his house. VERY VERY cool. And we talked on the phone the other day, first time in 10 years, and it was like no time had passed between us. Like I said, it was very very cool.

Soooooooooooooooooo...I'm flying back on Wednesday to Chicago, driving to Milwaukee, setting up shop, going out and partying with my bud on Wednesday, and then...it's THREE STRAIGHT DAYS OF CORPS!!!!

Now--some bad news.

1. I'm going to miss my wife and kids. My son is particularly in a cute phase of his life. So--sigh...the things you have to give up for CORPS!!!!

2. I've got lots of drill design stuff to do this season--and I'm doubting I'll be wanting to write drill in Milwaukee. So--I'm going to be behind the curve so to speak. BUT--upside is that I will be able to see first hand AWESOME drill (Rosander, Gaines, Billings, Sylvester, Weber--goooooooooood GOD I'll be in drill design 7th Heaven!!!), and either one of two things will happen. One, I'll be inspired to new heights of what can be done and what I can do myself, or, two, I'll become despondent and catatonic because I'll see that I'm nowhere NEAR as talented as these guys and I'll jump off the pressbox at the conclusion of finals.

3. I pressed the "purchase tickets" button WAY too quickly when I was booking my flight with United, and what turned out to be a great price was negated by the fact that the RETURN flight I booked was FAR TOO FREAKIN' EARLY IN THE MORNING! Hence, I was charged $100 to "change" my flight. WTF is that all about United???? You rat bastards. You better fly that plane straight, smooth and freakin' FAST. That's all I'ze gotz to say.

4. I don't get to go with my partner, my brother, my friend and inspiration Carl W. Nelson. He's got scheduling conflicts plus he's moving into a mansion somewhere so he has no time available to go. So, when I would be sitting with him and his family at a cool comfortable Irvine Spectrum Theater to watch quarter finals...I'll be sitting in the stadium. He said he'll be looking for me. He won't be able to miss me (center section, on the 50, 30 rows up from the side line...fat guy in Hawaiian shirt...therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre's Turner!!!!!!!!!)

Well...that's it. I'm fricken jazzed. I think I might have to do my very first ever Finals Review...hmmmmm...we'll see if I actually want to work on Saturday night or not.

That's it for the blog today--hope you had a great time and hey, let me tell you one more thing...

GET OUTTA HERE!! :-) Love ya...mean it...