"Dead end" makes the sign confusing

Wait, what?

This--THIS!--is what inspired me to go into fashion writing. The fearless metaphors! The nimble wordplay! The bold yet never vulgar turns of phrase! It's all here, preserved for the ages. Just like the creased, flared, no-natural-fibers-denim fashion tsunami it generated that splashes through our wardrobes to this day. Well, at least those of us who LIVE FOR FASHION.

Though I'm pretty sure embroidered, possibly ruffled shirts with lightly ballooned sleeves undermine all claims of being either a dude or a stud, but that's just a quibble.

Cool shirt. Weird couch.

I have done it:

I've just crossed a bucket-list thing off my bucket list and submitted something to be published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I think my fear-sucking headache fog allowed me to finally give my personal approval to something I've been working on and then to actually send it off for McSweeney's judgment.

Next on the bucket list: Bask in the fame and fortune that comes with it being published.

GAH!

You know how when you somehow decide it would be an awesome, merry idea to send gushing fan letters on Instagram to some of the people you just saw on Broadway and you try to make your effusive gushing really clever because that’s a Very Special Skill you have and in your delusion your unbounded cleverness will make the Broadway people so flattered and touched and amused that OF COURSE they’ll read your gushing fan letters to their entire and entirely grateful casts who will probably hopefully maybe all respond to you with notes that are effusively thankful and not at all guarded because they’re trying to gauge whether or not to put out restraining orders on you—which just so happens to be something you literally joked about in your fan letters in an attempt to be Very Specially Clever—and the morning after you’ve sent your gushing fanboy letters you wake in a clammy-skin gray-sweat mortifying epiphany about the horrors you’ve unleashed and now you’re afraid to open Instagram in the mortal fear that your Broadway people HAVE in fact responded and you suddenly realize that the last thing in the world you want is to see what they might have to say to you either way because you’d actually rather instead be pushed by judgy cool kids into a volcano of feral she-wolves as swarms of angry syphilis bees eat your eyes?

Me neither.

Happy birthday, Stephen Sondheim!

Thank you for redefining musical theater. For redefining music. For redefining theater.

Thank you for composing music that's at once asymmetrical and balanced, halting and fluid, atonal and lush, messy and perfect.

Thank you for finding lyrics that explore the outer limits of rhythm and structure and rhyme, that tell a story or define a character or celebrate a moment or break a heart in sometimes just a handful of words, that always seem fresh, that always seem timeless, that always seem effortless.

Thank you for creating an apotheosis of creative and intellectual order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony.

Thank you for inspiring as only you can an enraptured young writer to think outside his own thoughts, to feel outside his own feelings, to never stop searching for the perfect word or the lyrical phrase or the essential defining idea in a universe of creative entropy, to always make sure he's proud of how he creates and proud of what he writes.

And thank you for the phrase that I rely on almost daily to turn an undefined someday into a compelling now ... to pull me out of inertia and propel me sometimes through a bipolar fog and sometimes just through my own complacency to run a marathon, broaden my perspective, take on a challenging writing project, upgrade to a difficult tap class, find a solution, emerge unscathed or at least unbroken, or some days to just show up.

Careful the things you say; children will listen. And sometimes they'll turn your words into kick-ass tattoos.

Feel the flow,
Hear what's happening:
We're what's happening!
Long ago
All we had was that funny feeling,
Saying someday we'd send 'em reeling.
Now it looks like we can!
Someday just began.

I wish I’d written this truly inspired silliness,

if for no other reason than to have a plausible backstory explaining why I’ve never tickled the ivories to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on any of my parents’ anniversaries.

And so all this helicopter knowledge won’t go to waste.

I used to write a four-page, single-spaced, 10-point Garamond (because it’s narrower than Times New Roman so I could squeeze in more words) Christmas letter and mail it to 300+ of my closest friends and relatives

I also used to spend November through January under a crushing blanket of self-imposed stress. And crippled by paper cuts and the costs of printing and stamps.

Now I pace myself by blathering daily on social media instead. Merry Christmas to me!

I’ve written this many things since November 29

And yes, our systems track our numbers for us in real time and display them on a convenient screen we can leave open in a browser tab. But I learned to count on an abacus, and if that was good enough for my brah Demosthenes, it’s good enough for couture shoes. Change my mind.

And while we’re talking about dates ’n’ stuff, TODAY IS MY NO-POP ONE-MONTH-IVERSARY!

Excerpted from the Journal of Personal & Interpersonal Loss:

Twenty years ago—on the 10th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103—I was invited to write a personal remembrance of the event for the scholarly Journal of Personal & Interpersonal Loss through the psychology department at the University of Iowa. My copy of the publication currently sits in a box somewhere in storage, but I was able to dig up a transcript of the preamble I wrote for the piece, which I thought would be fitting to share today, on the 30th anniversary:

On December 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb blew Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, 54 minutes after it took off from London's Heathrow Airport. The explosion sent 259 passengers and crew members tumbling 6 miles to their deaths, killed 11 people on the ground, and created waves of shock and grief that continue to reverberate across the globe. My friend Miriam Wolfe, one of 35 students returning from a semester in London under the auspices of Syracuse University, was on that flight. Her death was the final, jarring event in a traumatic year that had brought me the accidental deaths of four other friends in an Easter plane crash and the breast cancer that would force my mother to endure a mastectomy and painful years of chemotherapy and drug treatments. While it is tempting to canonize the victims of violent disaster, Miriam was different—and inarguably deserving of such hagiography. A tribute written for one of three memorial scholarships established in her honor calls her "a rare and gifted young woman who lived life to the fullest; actively worked to change the world for the better; and gave a great deal of love, joy and wisdom to all who knew her." Her death yanked me from the comfortable naiveté of my youth and forced me to confront the pain and confusion of the adult world. It destroyed my faith in the inherent good of mankind but showed me how disaster can bring out the best in people. It gave me a nihilistic view of life but forced me to make the most of every moment I have. It made me appreciate the people around me but gave me little tolerance for anyone who wastes my time. And it instilled in me a knee-jerk animus toward religion and nearly all things Middle Eastern. Ultimately, though, Miriam's life and death taught me how to live and love and survive in ways I never thought necessary—or possible.

Excerpted from "Surviving the Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103: The Loss of Innocence and a Dear Friend in an International Tragedy." Journal of Personal & Interpersonal Loss, Vol. 3, No. 1, January–March 1998. Pages 117–134. Publisher: Taylor &  Francis.

Hancher program notes: Les Misérables

Les Misérables is in the middle of an almost week-long run at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. If for some illogical reason you don't have your tickets, buy them here. If you HONESTLY can't make it to see this phenomenal show, you can--if you're so inclined--slog through the million-paragraph program notes I wrote for the production, which I am conveniently posting right here. Bring a snack and something to drink, though; I kinda went long this time:

Europe and America in the time of Les Misérables:
Hearing the people sing beyond the world of Jean Valjean
By Jake Stigers

Quick: When in history did the events of Les Misérables happen?

The farther we get away from the past, the easier it can be for us to file stories about--for instance--the Black Plague, Michelangelo, Les Misérables, the Civil War or the Titanic into a singular Olden Times mental folder and not fully understand any larger historical context that might shape or define our understanding of those events.

(Before you reach for your phones to google all that: The Black Plague wiped out up to 60% of Europe’s total population around 1350. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was one of the defining artists of the Italian Renaissance in the early 1500s. We’ll get to Les Misérables in a minute, but for the sake of this rough timeline remember that it took place in France in the early 1800s. The American Civil War prevented the Confederate southern states from seceding over the issue of slavery when it ended in 1865. And the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage between Southampton and New York City just over 100 years ago in 1912.)

For the masterful way the musical Les Misérables telescopes the events and the settings of the book Les Misérables into 49 songs in two sung-through acts, an understanding of a more global context can meaningfully enhance any appreciation of it--if for no other reason than to triangulate it into the broader timeline of history.

It’s understandably impossible to cover every aspect of the history and culture surrounding the protagonist Jean Valjean’s journey through Les Misérables, and this essay in no way tries to do so. Instead, it touches on a range of events from the epic to the merely interesting that can hopefully offer useful context for understanding the world in which Les Misérables unfolds:


1796: Preamble: Jean Valjean is sentenced to prison in the Bagne of Toulon

Nineteen years before the story of Les Misérables begins, the peasant Jean Valjean is sentenced as prisoner number 24601 to serve time in the notorious Bagne of Toulon for stealing bread to feed his starving sister. During his almost two decades of incarceration, France and the entire Western Hemisphere undergo a chain reaction of revolutions and wars that radically alter the course of modern global history. But first, let’s back up a bit more ...

Just three years before Valjean entered prison, the former King Louis XVI of France and his wife Marie Antoinette were convicted of high treason and guillotined at the Place de la Révolution in Paris as a thousand-plus years of French monarchy fell and the French Revolution began. The ensuing French Revolutionary Wars raged from 1792 to 1802, first pitting the French Republic against monarchies in Europe and then spreading as far as Egypt and North America. Their end segued almost directly into the era of Napoleonic Wars that carried over unresolved disputes between Napoleon’s French Empire and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. A total of seven wars in all, they ended when the European Allies finally defeated Napoleon in the one-day Battle of Waterloo near what is now Belgium in 1815.

Aside from the expected cataclysmic destruction wrought by two decades of prolonged combat, these wars also brought explosive revolutions in European social structures, redefined international borders and relationships, and radically transformed the ways future wars would be strategized and fought to this day.

Partly to fund his eponymous wars, Napoleon Bonaparte sold France’s Louisiana Territory in North America to President Thomas Jefferson of the fledgling United States in 1803. The Louisiana Purchase, as the acquisition of this territory came to be called, stretched from present-day Louisiana to what is now Montana on land that would eventually be partitioned into 15 states—including Iowa—and parts of two Canadian provinces. It more than doubled the existing square mileage of the United States and fueled what our growing country would declare to be our Manifest Destiny: a continued and often ruthless expansion all the way west across the continent to the Pacific Ocean that involved annexing and conquering land from Mexico, Britain and the continent’s Native Americans.

Back in Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his now-iconic dum-dum-dum-DUMMM Symphony No. 5 in 1808 that would help define a burgeoning era of Romanticism in music, art and literature. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—the quintessential composer of the Classical period in music—had died seventeen years earlier, at the early pre-dawn of this new Romantic period that would begin to shape almost a century of culture in both Europe and America. Romanticism was a bold new paradigm that shed the Classical era’s emphasis on structure and melody in favor of exploring emotion, imagination and the free expression of feeling—all of which spilled over into the worlds of art and literature. Case in point: Les Misérables and Valjean’s operatic journey through morality, love, sacrifice, penance and ultimately grace.

Here are a few more interesting milestones that Jean Valjean missed during his incarceration: After observing that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, Edward Jenner introduced the first successful smallpox vaccine—actually the first ever vaccine—in England in 1796. French soldiers fighting under Napoleon in the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria discovered the Rosetta Stone—a decree from Egypt’s 300 BC Ptolemaic dynasty that was inscribed in three languages and unlocked the mysteries of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs—in 1799. The Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to become the United Kingdom in 1801. The world population officially reached one billion people in 1804. And the Industrial Revolution hit its peak, radically transforming the way we produced everything from textiles to energy to physical and social infrastructure.

So the narrative of Les Misérables opens in a radically new world from the one Jean Valjean knew when his theft of a loaf of bread landed him in prison 19 years earlier. And, as worlds have a way of doing, his just keeps changing ...


1815: Jean Valjean is released from the Bagne of Toulon

Valjean is released and left homeless in the commune-city of Digne-les-Bains in the early years of France’s Bourbon Restoration, a new constitutional monarchy set in place after the fall of Napoleon. Under the new King Louis XVIII, France restored relationships with longtime allies, centralized its government in Paris and moved forward with relative stability under a Revolution-inspired motto: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Across the pond, the War of 1812 had ended and America was experiencing what is still called the Era of Good Feelings marked by a decline in partisan politics and a sense of nationalist identity thanks to a series of Supreme Court opinions supporting a more centralized government here. A year earlier, a lawyer and amateur poet named Francis Scott Key saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry after an all-night bombardment by British forces near the end of the war. The sight inspired him to write “Defence of Fort M'Henry,” a poem that soon became the lyrics to our National Anthem: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Three years after Valjean’s release, twenty-year-old Mary Shelley published, initially anonymously, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in England. This gothic novel is considered to be the first work of modern science fiction for its premise that employs a deliberate use of science and technology to create a creature of fantasy and imagination. Not to be outdone in the genre of gothic literature, American author Washington Irving killed off—or did he?—poor Ichabod Crane after a terrifying encounter with the Headless Horseman in his 1820 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

And in a slight detour from this essay’s stated narrative about Europe and America in the time of Les Misérables, it’s interesting to note that in January of 1820, German explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev were the first to see and officially discover Antarctica.


1823: John Valjean, under the alias Monsieur Madeleine, is now a wealthy factory owner and mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer

France’s Bourbon Restoration period lasted until the 1830-32 uprisings depicted later in Les Misérables, but by 1823 the constitutional monarchy had been slowly disassembled by hard-right ultra-royalists, and with the rise of King Charles X in 1824 it lurched even farther right with severe restrictions on the press and a campaign to compensate the families of nobles whose property had been taken during the Revolution.

Here in America, we’d carved the state of Missouri out of the Louisiana Purchase territory in 1821, bringing our state count—and the number of stars on our growing flag—to 24. To assert our independence and declare our neutrality in any future European conflicts, President James Monroe introduced the Monroe Doctrine in his 1823 State of the Union address, declaring that any European attempt to re-colonize the Americas would be considered a hostile act toward the United States. And three years later on July 4, 1826—the 50th anniversary of the approval of our Declaration of Independence—both former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died.

To modern historians, the Classical era in music had officially ended by 1820, leaving Romanticism as the dominant voice in Western music, art and literature. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Symphony No. 9 in 1824 thunderously marked the occasion, as did many iconic works of art, including Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), which depicted the goddess Liberty bearing the flag of France in its brilliant red and blue as she guides the triumphant citizenry forward over the pro-royalist bodies who fell in the victorious July Revolution of 1830.

1823 ended on a visions-of-sugar-plums note with the anonymous publication of A Visit from St. Nicholas (later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore), which introduced America to the Santa Claus we celebrate to this day with his like-a-cherry nose and bowl-full-of-jelly laugh.


1832: The Paris June Rebellion

The June Rebellion—also called the Paris Uprising—depicted in Les Misérables was an actual historical event. The last of a two-year series of violent anti-monarchist outbreaks in Paris, this battle was inspired by the cholera death of French Parliamentarian Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a popular anti-royalist and champion of the poor. The uprising lasted only two days: June 5-6, 1832.

The song “The ABC Café - Red and Black” that student revolutionaries Marius and Enjrolas sing in Les Misérables to stir the passions of their fellow students into battle has a coincidental—albeit not specific—relationship to the French novel The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir) that had been published two years earlier by Stendhal (a pen name of French novelist Marie-Henri Beyle). While the Red and the Black in the Les Misérables uprising represent “the blood of angry men” fighting on behalf of the poor who have been long oppressed by “the dark of ages past,” the novel tells the story of a poor man’s ultimately futile attempts to rise above his station in life through hard work, talent, and eventually deception and hypocrisy.

Speaking of revolutionary insurrections, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (he used this name to distinguish himself from a number of similarly named relatives), the longest-lived and last surviving signatory of America’s Declaration of Independence, died on November 14 of 1832, 56 years after the document was signed. He was 95.

But the revolutions of the era weren’t tied entirely to politics. The British sloop HMS Beagle had set sail a year before the rebellion on a five-year expedition to chart the coasts of South America, and it carried as a passenger a young English biologist named Charles Darwin. Darwin published The Voyage of the Beagle in 1839 as both a travel memoir and a scientific journal documenting the discoveries in biology, geology and anthropology he made on the trip. These discoveries inspired additional expeditions and research that supported his theories of evolutionary biology that he eventually published in his 1859 On the Origins of the Species.


1833: Marius and Cosette make their final reconciliation with Valjean

The French Charter of 1830 had overthrown the conservative government of King Charles X and signaled the beginning of the 18-year July Monarchy, where the ascending Louis Philippe conspicuously proclaimed himself Roi des Français (“King of the French”) instead of the imperialistic “King of France” and pledged to follow the juste milieu—the middle of the road that avoided radical political extremes.

As Valjean reconciles with his past at the end of Les Misérables and finally understands that “to love another person is to see the face of God,” Romanticism is at its peak celebration of both emotional life and the unknown afterlife, nature and the supernatural, the Medieval past and the infinite future. Its brave-new-cultural-world outlook mirrors his final resolution from guilt to atonement … and it indeed allows him a new “life about to start / when tomorrow comes.”

An interesting side note: After spending four years studying American representative democracy from the wide-reaching perspectives of our Constitution, economics, separation of church and state, and societal attitudes toward women, French diplomat and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville published in 1835 De La Démocratie en Amérique, which is commonly translated to Democracy in America. Tocqueville was interested in examining the successes and failings of our democratic revolution in comparison to the aftermath of the revolution in France—in particular the fall of the aristocratic class and the rise of the concept of equality. Among his conclusions: While democracy carries with it the danger of a tyranny of the majority and a loss of governmental control by the people, the promise of equality at its foundation was one of the greatest political and social ideas of his era … and the United States at the time was the quintessence of successful democratic equality.

Four years after the narrative of Les Misérables ends, Queen Victoria ascended the English throne at the age of 18 and ushered in a 63-year period of cultural influence and British expansion that lasted until the very dawn of the 20th century. While her reign saw both cataclysmic wars and monumental advances in technology, we can all agree here that the two defining landmarks of her monarchy were these: Iowa became the 29th of the United States in 1846; and in 1862, Victor Hugo introduced the world to Jean Valjean and his immortal journey through sacrifice, morality, love, penance and ultimately grace when he published Les Misérables.


Jake Stigers is a writer, singer, actor and incurable history buff living in Cedar Rapids. He hates to brag, but he saw the original production of Les Misérables in London.

The Canadian Brass has its first concert in more than 20 years tonight at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City

In addition to the quintet's brilliance and talents, Canadian Brass is also known for its inspired silliness. I wrote program notes for the concert in the spirit of this inspired silliness--because there's no way I could fake my way through brilliance and talent--but I had a nagging suspicion that I might have gotten a bit tooooo silly when I submitted my copy.

And my suspicions were, for once, brilliant; Hancher politely decided not to put what I wrote in the program, but the communications director said he still liked it and suggested that I post it on the social medias. Which is exactly what I'm doing.

So pretend you're sitting in Hancher Auditorium right now, eagerly awaiting the Canadian Brass concert to start, and discovering that you'll have to completely ignore your date because you can't tear your eyes away from this inspired-and-despite-my-suspicions-not-tooooo-silly-at-all little essay you've discovered in your program.

(And if you don't have tickets to tonight's concert, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? Canadian Brass is guaranteed awesome. So get your tickets here.)


We warmly welcome Canadian Brass to our country
In the spirit of holiday welcome, we will gladly add meaningless extra Canadian letters to our words when we say our neighbours to the north play marvellously with colour, humour and gruelling labour

By Jake Stigers, recovering trombonist

Canadian Brass is an institution. A very serious musical ensemble that plays very serious music very seriously. I could not be any different degree of seriousness about this.

As such, it is worth investing a bit of your time and interest right now to learn everything there is to know about everything related to brass music to ensure you fully appreciate the Canadian Brass performance you’re about to hear.

Fortunately for you, I have condensed the entirety of brass-music history and knowledge into the following few short and not at all disjointed paragraphs. But don’t worry: There won’t be a test.


BASIC BRASS VOCABULARY THAT WILL BE ON THE TEST
Embouchure (say it with me: AHM-boo-shure): The way a brass player holds his or her lips, tongue, teeth and even facial muscles to blow or sometimes buzz air through an instrument. Some people compare it to kissing, but those people are wrong. Most beginning brass players and all Hancher audience members who’ve never played brass instruments are slightly alarmed that this odd lip-shape-buzz-thing even has a name.

Transposing instruments: This is extremely difficult to explain to people who haven’t had a lot of eggnog, but music for many brass instruments is written so that when a player sees a note on a page and plays that note, an entirely different but still usually pleasant note comes out. Nobody who hasn’t had a lot of eggnog knows why, but the fact remains that the sounds these transposing instruments (note: they’re called transposing instruments, if I forgot to mention that earlier) waft over unsuspecting audiences is an effluvium of lies. (Note to self: Effluvium of Lies is a great name for a brass quintet.) Fortunately for you the listener, the notes on the pages in front of the musicians here have all been laboriously recalibrated and neatly tuckpointed to the point that they will all come out relatively correctly. We hope.

Awesomeness: All brass instruments are awesome. Even the flüglehorn, but mostly because it has an umlaut. Anyway, put a bunch of brass instruments together into a quintet, and the awesomeness grows exponentially. Especially if they’re from Canada. And they have a cool band name.

Woodwinds: Woodwinds are not brass; they are the embarrassing cousins of brass who always have too much eggnog at what were supposed to be pleasant, un-alarming holiday parties. We are polite to woodwinds because they can hit lots of high notes—which reduces strain on the embouchures of brass players who don’t have to play them—but most woodwind players got to carry small instrument cases on the bus in middle school, and the brass players who had to carry the huge instrument cases simply cannot let go of their lingering resentment.

Percussion: Percussion is also not brass. Percussion is Latin—I think—for GO AHEAD AND TRY TO PLAY OVER ME YOU BRASS WIMPS I DARE YOU. In case you hadn’t noticed, percussion is loud. To make the situation worse, percussionists actually stand up so they can hit their drums and other hapless instruments with full body force to make them even louder. It’s not polite, and it’s not fair.

Strings: If you want to hear Canadian Strings, you’ll have to go to Violincouver. Because that is the only string-instrument-plus-major-Canadian-city mashup I can think of.

Ophthalmologist: This word has nothing to do with brass quintets—except for a possible causal relationship to the size of those little black music notes—but it’s included here to make sure you notice that it has two l’s. Most people misspell it, but now you won’t. It will also not be on the test.


MORE MUSICAL VOCABULARY THAT WILL BE ON THE TEST
Sharp: Often called a hashtag by the trendy kids, a sharp is an impossible-to-play-because-it’s-so-small tic-tac-toe board that is used to indicate that a note is raised one half step. Which is also called a semitone.

Flat: Often confused for a London apartment, a flat is a pointy little lowercase B (or I guess I could have typed that b) that is used to indicate that a note is lowered one half step. Which is still called a semitone.

Timbre (say it with me: TAM-ber): Also called tone color, the timbre (and I am not making this up: pronounce it TAM-ber or you will feel the cruel, oppressive judgment of every known musician past, present and future) is the character or perceived sound quality of a musical note or sound. It’s how we differentiate trumpets from sopranos (depending on the trumpets) or pianos from xylophones or the music that all these kids are listening to nowadays from rusty air horns.


NOW THAT YOU’RE UP TO TEMPO, LET’S GET DOWN TO BRASS TACKS. OR BRASS INSTRUMENTS. WHATEVER.
Here is a comprehensive, meaningful, fully representative dissertation on every Canadian Brass instrument you’re about to hear. Or maybe just four of them.


THE TRUMPET
Used to signal charges (cash was also accepted) in battles as far back as 1500 BC, the trumpet is now the go-to brass instrument for people who are too weak to carry tubas around. Trumpets are made with curves and swirls of metallic tubing that are not unlike Iowa State Fair funnel cakes, but with three vertical piston valves right in front of the trumpeters’ faces, which would make my eyes cross if I had to look at them.

Grossest feature: The spit valve. It’s exactly like a spigot on a pitcher of refreshing lemonade except instead it dumps accumulated trumpeter spit on the floor. Which is in no way refreshing. Or lemonade. A spit valve is called a water key in more polite circles. And also because the stuff that comes out of a spit valve is mostly condensation from a player’s breath, but I dare you to convince every English-speaking brass player ever to stop saying spit valve.

Etymology: The Old French trompe means, poetically, "long, tube-like musical wind instrument.” So old French people who play the trumpet are called “longtubelikemusicalwindinstrumenters.”

Linear length of straightened trumpet tubing: 6 feet.

Fun fact: The original Olympic Games involved a five-foot trumpet called the Salpinx. My research does not clarify with absolute certainty whether the Salpinx was actually played like a trumpet or instead thrown like a javelin.

Mutes: As with all brass instruments, trumpets employ mutes to alter their sound. (Do you remember our discussion about the sound-changing differentiations of timbre? DO YOU REMEMBER HOW TO PRONOUNCE IT?) Mutes fit into the bell of a trumpet and and often get mistaken for standard barware like orange juicers and martini shakers. Which explains everything you need to know.


THE HORN 
Often called the French horn, the plain-old horn is the only orchestra or band instrument that blows all of its sound backward in a direction where nobody can hear it except for the band moms who are waiting backstage with hugs and cookies. Whenever someone points out this ridiculous (I’m sorry but someone had to say it) design flaw, players of other brass instruments usually nod knowingly at each other and politely change the subject.

Grossest feature: While the spit valve—ahem, water key—is always totally gross, the horn has another gross trick up its sleeve … which is a pun because a horn player holds the horn by sticking one hand up its bell where all the humid horn air comes out, leaving the bell-holding hand what we will politely call clammy. Never high-five a horn player after a concert. You’ve been warned.

Etymology: The French made hoop-shaped hunting horns (alliteration runs rampant!) in the 1600s that they called trompes de chasse (which, as we can carry over from our trumpet etymology lesson, means “hunting long, tube-like musical wind instruments”). Because the French invented these horns, the English called them French horns. There’s no hiding stuff from the English.

Linear length of straightened horn tubing: 17 feet.

Fun fact: As I’ve pointed out earlier in the politest terms possible, the horn’s bell faces backward where I’m sorry but the audience could probably hear you better of you just hummed. As such, the horn is especially inefficient at blaring to the home-team crowds in a marching band. Enter: the mellophone! Not only does the mellophone have a forward-facing bell like all self-respecting marching-band instruments, but the bell has a huge, view-obstructing diameter that can leave its players tripping or wandering into the middle of the field without realizing it. Which serves them right for choosing an instrument that plays backward.

Mutes: Horn mutes probably look like trumpet mutes. I think. Since they’re used in backward-facing horn bells though, there’s really no way to know.


THE TROMBONE
The trombone is the long slidey brass instrument that has to sit back a few extra feet in a band or orchestra so it doesn’t hit the bassoons or saxophones or other lesser wind instruments in front of it when it stretches out to hit the low notes. While its shape should logically be a T (for Trombone), the consensus among people who discuss these things is that it’s shaped like an S (for Should Be A T But Whatever). Some trombones also have trumpet-type valves attached to the backs. Those are for trombonists who are too lazy to extend their long slidey things all the way for the low notes.

Key term: The long slidey part of a trombone is called a telescoping slide mechanism by the band kids who aren’t as cool as the other band kids. Which is really saying something.

Grossest feature: The spit valve on a trombone is also called a water key by people who are squeamish around the word spit. Because it’s at the far end of the telescoping mechanism, it leaves its spit puddle the farthest away from the musician—as opposed to other brass instruments that plop their spit right in front of the musicians and create serious actuarial hazards.

Etymology: The Italian tromba (trumpet) and -one ("big") make a trombone literally a "big trumpet.” But with a “telescoping slide mechanism.” And a “puddle of spit” that’s “really far away.”

Linear length of straightened trombone tubing: 9 feet. 13 feet if you measure with the slide fully extended. But why would anyone do that?

Fun fact: During the Renaissance, people called the trombone a “sackbut.” I am not making this up.

Mutes: Mute-as-in-shhh! mutes for trombones look like genie bottles or traffic cones sized for golden retrievers who drive. Wah-wah mutes (yes, that’s a thing) look like little toddler hats. Or the business ends of toilet plungers. Because some trombonists actually use the business ends of toilet plungers as wah-wah mutes. So wash your hands after you greet a trombonist after a muted performance. Or ever. (And this is no doubt the first time toilet plunger has appeared in a Hancher program. Three times, actually!)


THE TUBA
You will likely encounter three kinds of tubas in your lifetime, if you haven’t already: A concert tuba sits in a player’s lap and points straight up and politely doesn’t bump into other players. A hélicon is a tuba that wraps around a player’s body like a hug from a long-lost aunt at an awkward family reunion and points kind of upward so as to be heard as it’s being played while (and I am not making this up, though it sounds impossible to play a tuba in this situation) horseback riding. And a sousaphone is a super-round, super-curvy tuba that wraps around a player’s body and points its bell at the football stands and makes super-loud, super-awesome tuba noises.

Grossest feature: Have you ever seen a tuba spit valve? It looks like the Hoover Dam of the brass world. You could drown in the ensuing catastrophic deluge if it breaks. And that would be tu bad.

Etymology: Tuba is latin for “trumpet.” Latin was never good at measurements or perspective.

Linear length of straightened tuba tubing: 16 to 26 feet, depending on the type of tuba.

Fun fact: Two men named Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz patented what they called a “bass tuba” in 1835 with valves that they called “Berlinerpumpen.” All of those consonants are exactly the reason tubas are considered to be the spittiest of the brass instruments.

Other fun fact: Around 1900 there was some kind of spittin’ match (ahem) to build a tuba that played lower than the contrabass tuba, whose sound was already so low that it could only be measured on the Richter scale, which wouldn’t even be invented until 1935. So in 1913, some guys built what they called a “subcontrabass” for the World Exhibition in New York. It needed two players: one to blow in the mouthpiece and one to operate the valves. And six to clean up the spit.

Mutes: Tuba mutes are the same size and shape as Iowa tornadoes. Tuba Mutes is also a great name for a band. Especially a band of brass instruments. With five players. From Canada. Or not.


So congratulations! You can now count yourself up to speed on all things brass. And some things Canadian. All that’s left now is to enjoy the concert.

And to take the test.

Jake Stigers is a writer, singer, actor and recovering trombonist living in Cedar Rapids. He still harbors resentment toward all the flute players who could hold their instrument cases in their laps on the bus in middle school.

The boarding pass I’ve stuck in this book to eventually use as a bookmark tells me I’ve been schlepping it around unread for over two years

So I guess I’ll finally read it now before the receipt expires and I can’t return it to the bookstore.

Also: I hate that the only kiosk at CID sells only Pepsi products. And that it’s already out of cinnamon rolls.

Also: The tall, tan blond dude with the alluringly thick thighs who is sitting three seats away from me wearing Tretorns at the airport gate is totally gay and totally objectifying me. I hope.

Also: Bright yellow Mickey Mouse running shoes!

Also: Last night, after now 14 months of research and meetings and writing and scanning and formatting and copyfitting, I finally got the last of the stray information I was waiting for and finally made my last decisions about the pages I wasn’t sure I had the information and photos to support and I FINALLY released to the printing gods the massive book I’ve been editing and producing to commemorate First Lutheran Church’s 150th anniversary. Plus I finished two epic program-notes essays for Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. Plus I finished a smallish work initiative a day early since I’m leaving right now on vacation. Plus I know all my lines and music for Elf the Musical. I feel like I’m finally out from under an enormous cloud of endless obligations and I can finally, actually breathe for the first time in forever. Which, totally-not-planned coincidentally, is a song from Frozen. Which is a musical by Disney. WHICH IS WHERE I’M GOING ON VACATION RIGHT NOW.

Whew.

One paragraph more!

One of my favorite freelance writing gigs of all time is writing program notes for some of the musicals and concerts that come to Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City. I get to write about pretty much anything I want that I find related to a show or concert—which is completely freaking awesome for me as a researcher and writer—and I have pretty much no word limit—which is completely horrible for me as a researcher and writer WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP.

Case in point: This 79-chapter manifesto I’ve just written for the upcoming tour of Les Misérables. It took me easily 10 more hours of research than I’d intended, which is especially bad because I still have to write program notes for two other concerts before I leave for Disney on Wednesday. But IT. IS. AWESOME.

And you’ll just have to come an hour early when you see Les Misérables to SAVOR. EVERY. WORD.

Private note to Hancher so none of you had better read it: Is this headline too weird? I mean from a gluten-sensitivity standpoint?

Our My Fair Lady shirts are here!

And they’re laid out in regiments of resplendent ruby rosé at our dressing mirrors. Which is by far NOT the gayest thing I’ve written today.

Also: My post-Edwardian hair part is so on point that it’s almost rude. Because it’s not polite to point. Not even at the gay guy who says resplendent ruby rosé.

Tree what I did there?

So this time it was Scott’s turn to blow off our morning run—which was SO AWESOME and it’s TOO BAD HE MISSED IT because we RODE MAGICAL UNICORNS THE WHOLE WAY as we FEASTED ON THE AMBROSIA OF THE GODS and OTHER FANCIFUL STUFF—so Rob and I replaced him—and PUT HIM IN THE MIDDLE YOU’RE WELCOME—with this scraggly-ass tree for our post-run selfie, but the tree ended up looking pretty lush and majestic in the photo which is totally my fault because of my prodigious and intimidating photography talents don’t blame me I can’t help it.

In the course of our small talk as Rob and I were rocking our 10:56 pace though, I stumbled on what I think is an awesome idea for a submission to Theatre Cedar Rapids’ Underground New Play Festival. I’ve wanted to enter something for the competition, but I had no idea what to write about and I also have zero experience writing things that come from just my imagination; everything I’ve ever written has at the very least had its foundation in describing or reporting on something that already exists. Plus Rob—who has written countless and brilliant plays ONE OF WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A BIG HOLLYWOOD MOVIE WITH BIG HOLLYWOOD STARS—thinks my idea is a good one. Which gives me huge amounts of confidence that I can do this ... and hopefully do it well. So WATCH OUT HOLLYWOOD I’M COMING TO DOMINATE YOU and I’m RIDING A MAGICAL UNICORN THE WHOLE WAY.

I went to the Daily Iowan 150th anniversary reunion this weekend

and aside from reconnecting with old friends and colleagues and being reminded how proud I should be to have been a part of the paper’s noble and influential history, all I got was this awesome T-shirt:

Cake I like

1. I just left the 150th anniversary celebration/reunion of alumni of the University of Iowa’s Daily Iowan newspaper

2. Which has been and continues to be one of the country’s foremost influential and innovation-vanguard college newspapers
3. With AP accreditation and everything
4. As you might have inferred from my use of the word alumni in point 1, I worked there when I attended the University of Iowa
5. First as a copy editor
6. Which means proofreading and fact-checking nerd
7. Then as copy desk editor
8. Which means head proofreading and fact-checking nerd
9. I got paid to correct people’s grammar
10. And brutally curtail their garish use of excessive, showy punctuation
11. Grammar. Nerd. Power. Trip.
12. Though this probably explains why I’m single and living in my parents’ basement at the age of 50
13. And destined to die alone
14. I also wrote a weekly grammar column for the Daily Iowan
15. Seriously
16. It was called "That Grammar Guy"
17. The name was inspired by the TV show That Girl
18. I am not making this up
19. It used bizarre humor, recurring characters—including a cat named Xanthippe—and my own—hopefully funny—mnemonic devices to explain English grammar
20. Xanthippe was Socrates’ wife
21. But I used the name because I thought it was funny and not for its ties to any concept of learning
22. Mnemonic means "memory-aiding"
23. The m is silent
24. The first one, I mean
25. You’re welcome
26. Anyway ...
27. "That Grammar Guy" ran in the Daily Iowan every Monday for two years
28. I got fan mail
29. Mostly from foreign students who were struggling to learn our crazy-ass melting-pot language
30. I also reviewed theater, music and dance for the Daily Iowan
31. So my work there was both nerdy and gay
32. In my capacity as copy desk editor, I hired my brilliant and delightful friend Annette
33. I got to sit next to her at tonight’s dinner
34. Where it occurred to me that everyone in the room—and every career path we represented—was there based on an intricate genealogy of hiring decisions
35. Mind. Blown.
36. I also sat by my friend Tad, who is at least four years younger than I am
37. We didn’t work together at the DI, so I have no proof that he wasn’t at tonight’s dinner just for the pork and the really delicious ranch dressing
38. Speaking of, I didn’t notice until after I sat at our table that each seat had been pre-assigned a random dessert selection
39. I’m glad I accidentally sat in front of the chocolate cake, because it was insanely delicious
40. I noticed early on that Annette probably wasn’t going to finish hers, and I will go to my grave regretting that I did not ask her if I could have it if she was done ignoring its insane deliciousness
41. My running buddy Rob was also at our table but he left before the evening’s program was over so I barred him from being in our post-program group selfie
42. Long-lost friend Jamie wasn’t at our table but he came over to say hi after the program so he’s my new selfie buddy in place of Leavin’ Rob
43. The keynote speaker for the program was a man who hadn’t given me a job right after I’d graduated from college
44. EVEN THOUGH WE WERE BOTH IN THE ETERNAL BROTHERHOOD OF THE IOWAN THAT IS DAILY
45. But he told a story about marketing tampons to young Russian women tonight, so I guess it’s time I forgave and forgot
46. Tampons
47. Russian women
48. Yes, THAT old cliché
49. So there was this one guy who wrote editorials at the DI when I was there
50. Dark hair, lean, handsome, smart, old-money patrician air
51. Did I mention handsome?
52. This might surprise you given the dearth of hints I’ve provided leading up to this bombshell, but I had a huge crush on him
53. Especially on the days when he wore shorts
54. The crush was so eternal and all-consuming that I’ve completely forgotten his name by now
55. But obviously not his legs
56. This did not stop me, however, from hoping he’d be there tonight
57. And that we’d flirt awkwardly
58. Which is the only way I know how to
59. And then we’d totally make out
60. Oops. Did I just say that?
61. And then instead of sitting here typing this endless post, I’d be marrying him in the DI newsroom
62. With everyone at the reunion cheering for us
63. And fighting each other for exclusive coverage of our wedding
64. (We are all newspaper people, of course)
65. And, of course, in this scenario I’d also get Annette’s leftover cake
66. Plus everyone else’s
67. Because I’m one of the grooms and DON’T RUIN MY BIG DAY BY EATING ALL MY CAKE, PEOPLE
68. Sheesh
69. Journalism people, amirite?
70. Anyway, I didn’t see anyone there tonight who looked like him
71. But none of the guys had any legs out for inspection
72. So here I sit, writing this long-ass post instead
73. Which I’d kinda hoped would stretch to 150 points
74. Because it’s the 150th anniversary of the paper
75. But no

I'm a professional fashion writer. Do not try this at home.

Tiers of polka-dot chiffon tulle flutter like wispy cotton-candy nothingness next to Ivanka in an ugly fucking dress. ‬

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