Trying to get the Psyhigh Jazz Band to play Ska. Wrote out parts for the whole band in hieroglyphics, just as it was written out by the Ancient Egyptians when they first invented Ska. Generally the Psyhigh Jazz Band tends more towards Free Jazz, so getting them to accept this much structure is going to be a challenge.

Psychic High School students are full of themselves. Sure, a lot of them have preternatural ability on wind, reed, brass, and percussion instruments—and I’m not even going to talk about strings—but these kids start to push their psychic power through a clarinet or a trumpet and they think they own the world.

I teach psychic symphonic band and psychic marching band and psychic pep band and the psychic jazz band. Psychic orchestra I am not. But have you seen psychic band kids assert their collective force over a teacher? Consider a substitute confronted with a class of armed students. That's what being a band teacher is like every day. The students actually control the Means of Production, and if you're familiar with Marxist Band Theory then you know what that means.

I really like band. @Mr. Howl makes it fun. He lets us do whatever we want and makes faces and throws his stick. He's funny. :)

Today we played for an hour and he didn't say anything. We walk around a lot in the bandroom while we play, since we don't need to read music just "play what's in our hearts." But now @pseudotarp27 is teaching us how to skank and it's really fun but somebody's elbow hit the end of my clarinet and it totally bashed into my face, and I think the reed cut up the roof of my mouth. Then pseudotarp said that I skanked like an Egyptian and I was proud.

I can't wait till band tomorrow! You should join.

Students love to complain about Psychic Marching Band but I love it. It's true the uniforms are itchy, and @Mr. Howl tends to lose it and throw his stick and storm off and hide under the bleachers curled into a ball, but we're really able to bring the crowds to more amazing heights of ecstasy when they experience our music coupled with the super-charged symbology we create on the field.

Now we're working on a Solar Barge routine that @pseudotarp27 suggested. He calls it the Atet, and it's a perfect way to work our new ska material into the act. Hoping to unveil it soon, but it's still in rehearsal.

I generally don't "get" jazz, but now part of me LOVES it! And it's all because of Psychic Pep Band! I was at the pool for the Water Walking meet against Ṛddhi Powers High, and I don't know if you've seen them but they're really good. It's always either them or Shaolin Temple Academy who go to State. So Ṛddhi Powers has six people on the deep end, doing their human pyramid on the surface of the water. They're super serious, and they NEVER get wet. Then the scrappy Psyhigh team approaches the edge of the pool, knowing they're going after the probable champs, and they were wearing TUXEDOS! Like they weren't even planning to get wet. That's when the Jazzy Pep Band breaks into "Istanbul not Constantinople" and the whole team just walks right out over the water like they're taking a walk in the park in the summer time. It was SO AWESOME.

As soon as they got into formation, though, they splashed right through the surface and got soaked. All of them. Ṛddhi Powers didn't gloat, or smirk, or even smile. They're TOTALLY serious.

But hey now part of me likes Jazz!

Psychic Jazz Band going to the Quasi-dimensional Invitational High School Jazz Competition? Alright!!! It's on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and I've never been there so I'm stoked. It's at the end of the month, so we've still got time to practice, but the biggest issue is just getting there.

See, to accept the invitation, you've got to be able to play yourself to Titan. They've provided a general structure, which is like public key encryption. But we have to figure out our end. I got the invite myself but am trying to get @Mr. Howl to devote the time necessary in class to work it out. If it works, we'll all be transported to Titan and perform! It's like a dream come true.

Some other band students have asked my about the strange lights coming from practice room 23, and it's because I was able to make it to Mars today!

I was working on one of @pseudotarp27's new songs and I must have really nailed it. At first, I could tell that I had pinged something. It was like something big and sleepy was waking up and paying attention to me. Three things, actually. It was spooky at first because I could feel them looking right at me, but from an almost inconceivable distance. Something old. Out in the cold. But I kept on playing and the song was singing out of my clarinet and the room filled with a green light and I was whisked to Mars.

Turns out it was a trio of talent scouts--A&R for Mars Music. We hung out in the green room and there were some energy drinks and a cheese plate. They've got a great underground scene there apparently.

They took a Polaroid and let me go, said they'd let me know. Maybe they'll put in a good word for us on Titan!

To get a big enough sound, turns out we're going to need a lot more Psychic Jazz Band members. Do you play an instrument? ANY kind of instrument? The Yabahar? The Hydraulophone? Pyrophone? Singing Tesla Coil?

We might just need people to bang on pots and pans.

If you're interested and would like to join us on our field trip to the Moons of Jupiter Quasi-dimensional Invitational High School Jazz Competition at the end of this month, let us know!

Ability to read music not required. But applicants should have prior experience with telepathic instruction.

I hate band trips. Of course the kids are awful, but the paperwork is too. Especially when there's interplanetary travel involved. Or interdimensional. It's all the same to me in terms of the visas and the passports.

By this school's very nature, most of our students are "undocumented" in one way or another, so filling out these forms becomes a creative writing experiment. "Benjamin Srinivasa Ramanujan" and "Nancy Shakuntala Devi" make up almost half our wind section. All the better when I don't use the kids' real names, frankly, because of the cost these immigration devils demand. You'd think you'd have to sell a piece of your soul to just set foot in a nearby planet's moon system. Well, in fact, you do in a lot of them. The Ancient Ones have a grip around the portals and they're not interested in letting anybody through for free, but at the same time they're so busy and there's so much bureaucracy that with just a little bit of know-how you can find your way through. I guess that's a teacher's real value today: experienced paper-pusher.

I play the psychic spoons and attended my first Psychic Jazz Band practice today. I could really feel the music flowing through me! I love telepathic instruction. And I love moving my spoons telepathically. They're dancing right now, next to the computer screen, floating in the air as I type. I walk the paths around the school and my spoons follow me wherever I go, click clack clickety clack on the garden path or tapping out a telegraph line on the lockers in the hall. Now I offer my spoons in the service of Psychic Jazz.