Chaos Attraction

Picnic Day Bandsanity

2012-04-21, 10:09 p.m.

Another year, another Picnic Day.

This year I ran into Dawn pretty early on before she was going to work a shift on the day, so we hung out for a bit. I found out a few days ago that there's going to be an eclipse IN OUR AREA on May 20--which is a Sunday, in the afternoon, i.e. an actual time when I can watch an eclipse without it being at 2 a.m. on a weekday. The geology club was selling eclipse glasses and handing out maps as to where to view it. They recommend driving an hour up from here for the best view, so I suggested to Dawn that we do that. She likes to go to some wildlife preserve in Redding--right in the target area-- so hey, that works out!

I ended up taking a lot of pictures, which start here.

I watched the parade. There were some nutty floats, as usual. It was fun.

I had decided to go to the physics show this year, but between the line, and them running late, and me wanting to get the liquid nitrogen ice cream (I looooove this stuff) and go to the Doxie Derby, I skipped it. I actually saw the entire Derby this year, I think this is the first time I may have ever done that. I did wander through a few exhibits here and there, like the Rube Goldberg exhibit (even though I didn't get to see any of them actually like, go) and the engineering building and the plant sciences building.

Normally almost every cool thing on campus closes down/runs out of stuff by about 3 p.m. on the day. I have spent years trying to find places that are open until 4, but this year I was stumped to find anything i hadn't seen before. I ended up at the Battle of the Bands site, i.e. the one thing that goes on all day and night on the day. Now, I'd been there once before for a few minutes with all the relatives years ago, and at the time it had been pretty dull. But this time...HOLY CRAP, IT WAS A CRAZY-ASS HIPPIE PARTY. I'm talking the likes of me wishing I'd been a band member because it REALLY looked like fun to be playing there today.

The Irvine band (the "Anteater Sci-Fi Band") had some awesome costumes. They decorated their tent area in geek, and some of the costumes were amazing. I saw that singer chick from The Fifth Element, a girl in a Dalek dress, and a girl riding a Tauntaun. Amazing. I loved their outfits.

Also doing well this year was the Humboldt folks, who usually carry off wearing a uniform while wackying it up very well. I don't have any decent shots of the Aggie band, but they've got tons of funny shirts. Berkeley, alas, doesn't get too weird in their band wardrobe, but they seemed to have lots of pieces of flair.

But San Diego and ESPECIALLY STANFORD...well, they got crazy wacky with their outfits and I loved it. Stanford in particular was obviously the most insane group out there. They brought a giant teeter-totter here--I'm surprised that was even allowed, though they didn't really use it. They had a tree mascot costume that was ... astounding to watch, let's just say. And they got very energetic and wackadoo when they were up. I swear they had the world's most awesome, longest drum circle song ever--it was long enough that the Aggies were running around the entire arboretum and rolling around and running around on the hills for awhile. I ran into a few folks I knew and took tons of crazy pictures. I was there for hours--finally left after Humboldt played "Louie Louie" for a half hour and showed no signs of stopping.

I'll admit that I have been kind of getting bored/same old, same old with Picnic Day in recent years, but it's fun to discover something crazy that I haven't done before here.


previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry
hosted by DiaryLand.com