A Record Broken

As I type this, I'm doing something very unusual: Listening to Lab Band Madness on KNTU on the Web, at home. I've listened to the broadcast before, on the way up to the concert (my Tuesday responsibilities at the college almost always end after the nine-band marathon has already begun, so I have a good 45-minute commute before I get there), but never in place of actually attending the concert itself. As a matter of fact, this is the first Kev-less Lab Band Madness since I was in high school!

So why aren't I there? Well, I have a few good reasons:

• Even though I started driving my own car again today, I'm trying to get back to that in little bits, and a trip to Denton isn't a "little bit" of driving no matter how you slice it.


• If I went to the concert, I'd get home about midnight or so, possibly later. I also have to meet a bus for Colorado at 6 a.m. tomorrow (yes, it's time for the annual college trip again). Those two things don't sound like a good combination.


• One of my friends wanted to go, and would have split the driving with me, but he's in the same boat: He catches a bus for work at around 7 a.m. or so; neither of us were really up to a trip that late tonight.

Actually, were it not for my mishap last week, I'd probably buck the odds and have gone up there. just to keep the tradition alive. I still have a good record for the fall concert (save for the 50th anniversary in '97, when my own school's concert conflicted with it and we couldn't reschedule), and I'll start a new streak with Madness next spring.

And thanks to the folks at KNTU, one of my college haunts, for making this available on the Web (or, as Steve Wiest said just a minute ago, "beaming it all the way to Pluto").

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Every time a trombone player gets signed to a label, an angel get its wings."--Wiest, in a "halftime" interview with KNTU Program Manager Mark Lambert.