Oct. 10

THEME... Columbus Quincentennial

ANNOUNCER: Monday is the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival at the Americas - and you thought it was just another three-day weekend. To honor this event, one Rice Band Day performer will enter the field for each of those 500 years.

Representing 1492...

Representing 1493...

Representing 1494... {21s}

MOB: AAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!

ACTION: performers scream and charge the field...

FORMATION: 500

MUSIC: Intro-Conquistador

ACTION: after fanfare MOB scatters to...

FORMATION: Crown

ANNOUNCER: Five-hundred years ago, many people thought the Earth was flat. Of course, they were idiots. Columbus , however, thought the world was round and you could sail straight west to reach India. He was a visionary idiot. Nevertheless , he convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Imelda of Spain to finance his voyage, which they did by selling Imelda's shoes. {23s}

MUSIC: Conquistador

ACTION: Columbus visits Spanish royalty and gets the boot and books and pumps and wing-tips... during song the formation changes to $MU ...song ends and MOB scatters to...

FORMATION: Waves

ANNOUNCER: And so Columbus set out, in his three famous ships, the Ninja, the Pinto, and the Volvo. Unfortunately, there are no logs from the trip because they were on his ill-fated fourth ship, the Yugo, which could not make the entire voyage.

MUSIC: Aqualung/Smoke On the Water

ACTION: ships sail aimlessly; the Yugo stops and the crew looks under the hood ..song ends and MOB scatters to...

FORMATION: Island with Palm Tree

ANNOUNCER: By an amazing coincidence, Columbus sighted the Caribbean Islands on Columbus Day. There was much rejoicing when he went ashore and met the Carib Indians, for they had not seen Europeans since the Vikings left the year before ...

... their tourist industry was in a slump ...

MUSIC: Down On the Corner

ACTION: the SAs stage the meeting of Chris and the natives with ample demonstrations of supply-side economics...

FORMATION: 1492

ANNOUNCER: Columbus returned to Spain and became rich and famous, and remained that way until he died poor and unknown. The world would have been a different place without him -

our nation's capitol would be called "Washington, D."; Canada's westernmost province would be simply "British"; and Juan Valdez would be a man without a country. {18s}

MUSIC: Louie

EPILOGUE: Felt weak on the field, but looked quite a bit better on the videotape. Coach Goldsmith came over after pre-game and asked, nicely, if we would please take out all of the book jokes that we'd stuffed into the script. It seems that SMU's coach was a Rice grad and that the offense involved was a "piddling kind of thing" compared to a Notre Dame player admitting that he had received $5000 from a booster. So we took out all of the book jokes. It sure could have used them...

Best response was for "idiots ... visionary idiots". The props looked great. King Ferdinand dribbling the globe of the earth was hysterical. Something slid down a rope out of the stands, but I don't know what.

Grade: B-

Attendance: 15k (sure didn't look like that many)

We won, can't remember the score.