Klarinet Archive - Posting 000774.txt from 2002/01

From: Ed Wojtowicz <ewoj@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!! Mastercard Clarinet
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 11:26:42 -0500

I have often felt that in the TV or movies the kid in the band is the loser,
or when you hear the school band it is dreadful. On the other hand, here is
an AP story that was in the news the other day that may help the poor
clarinetist.

Ed

Playboy Playmate Goes to Prom

The Associated Press
Sunday, January 27, 2002; 4:01 PM

TUSTIN, Calif. A high school senior turned heads this weekend with his
winter formal date: Playboy Playmate Petra Verkiak.

The 35-year-old pinup, who was Miss December 1989, offered to accompany Toby
Hocking after she read his college entrance essay.

Hocking, a straight-A clarinet player, wrote about how he felt like an
outcast before deciding it was up to him to seek out friends and make the
most of his years at Foothill High School.

"I thought it was really deep," said Verkiak, who received the essay from a
friend who got it from Hocking's mother. "And I related to it."

Verkiak offered to go with Hocking to the girl-asks-guy winter formal if no
one asked him out. "At first I thought, 'Go to the dance with a
35-year-old?' Hocking said. "But then I realized, she's really hot."

The day before the dance, Principal Al Marzilli made sure Verkiak knew the
dress code: Nothing sheer or strapless.

"I'm so excited," Verkiak said, clutching Hocking's arm and wearing a black
Del Rosario gown as the couple emerged from a limousine to attend the
formal. "This is like a fairy tale."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46018-2002Jan27.html

> Subject: Re: [kl] OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!! Mastercard Clarinet

>
> Seem like nobody is getting it but I thought the point was the commercial
> shows somebody thinking clarinet is so terrible it is "priceless" to switch
> to another more fun or easier instrument. It is a bad image of clarinets.
>
> I notice something in newspaper ads for Music & Arts, for band instruments,
> the kid they show playing a clarinet is always the most awful pencil neck
> geek with his mouth in a huge geeky grin with too many teeth showing. He
> looks like a natural born fool. What kind of a message is that for kids who
> might want to play clarinet? How do they sell any clarinet that way anyway? I
> am so glad my son fell for the sound and never mind the image. He is only 8
> but thinking for himself, not a lemming. At the school where he had to
> transfer some kids saw him with the clarinet and start calling him faggot. I
> don't think they know what that is suppose to mean in third grade but to them
> it mean geek. He hate that school anyway so they never could turn him around
> against the clarinet.
>
> Cass Hill
>

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