The Minority
We had an F.F.O to Atlanta this weekend to see the Honda Battle of the Bands. A marching band competition, not unlike the one seen in Drumline – without all the extra drama of course. It was something that my mom wanted to do – and so we all piled up in the car and headed on down.
The band competition itself was alright. Jose, the kids and I only stayed for the first 5 bands. They sort of all blended together and seemed a bit the same. And marching bands in the Georgia dome really start to sound like a lot of noise and rumbling after a while.
There were 70,000 people in the Georgia Dome and I would say that 69,985 of them were black. I think that Jose was the only Hispanic person that I saw – but to be fair, I didn’t see all 70,000 people. It was a bit of a lesson in cultural diversity. There was a dj who would come on and talk to the crowd a bit between sessions. And then they would play some music – I had always operated under the assumption that it was possible to enjoy music without standing up to do so. Engaging in seat dancing is perfectly acceptable as well. But such was not the case at the Battle of the Bands. You’d have thought we were at an exercise class the people were up and down so much. It was sort of like going to a Pentecostal church except we were worshiping sound instead of Jesus. It was very interesting.
I spent no small amount of my time there trying to find people like me – and the rest trying not to piss the man off in front of me – he was bald and Isaiah thought this was really interesting and anytime he came close to the man’s head, he had to touch it. And if he wasn’t touching the blind man’s head, he was throwing his boppy down by the bald man’s son’s feet. The son was always very helpful in retrieving it – but kept looking at us as if we were aliens from another planet. I don’t know if perhaps he’d never seen anyone Hispanic before – or if he was trying to figure out how the Hispanic man fit into the group with the old white woman, the two fat white women (who really would have fit into the crowd as big white women are always fag hags or dating black men), the big redneck looking white boy and the two white kids.
Overall, it was a decent experience. No one seemed thuggish, or rude, or ill mannered – but perhaps they bought their seats late and were sitting up high in the ranks. I think that we were sitting in the seats with the parents of the participants – so that means we were with the families of college kids – which is not the same as the kids who go to my school.
All in all – I would recommend that you watch it on television instead of going – unless you want to see the aquarium – which was pretty nice – but you need to see it on a weekday – because it’s busy fast and that’s no where you want to be with little kids.
