The Cazadero Retreat 2010 - Part 1 (The Basses)

The Cazadero retreat. The yearly weekend retreat where the GGP goes to Cazadero, which is about a two hour drive north of San Fransisco. Where chamber groups are formed. Where people are appalled at how terrible, horrible, and terrible the bassists are in the orchestras. They cannot play in tune. They can not play in rhythm. They misbehave. They blame all of their mistakes on the other sections. What did the drummer get on his I.Q. test? Drool. The bassists are the drummers of the orchestra.

At one point, my stand partner threw this swedish fish thing at one of the (drummers!) bassists, I'm going to call him Tweedle-dumbest, as opposed to Tweedle-dumber, the other bass. So, it lands under Tweedle-dumbest's bass, which causes the two Tweedle-stupids to spend five minutes reaching for the fish, without setting their basses down!, and me sitting there laughing my ass off and giving my stand partner a high-five. Eventually, Tweedle-dumbest manages to get it somehow (I was to busy laughing to notice), looks at it, pauses, says "400 second rule." (I kid you not), blows it off, and eats it.

Later on, the basses were having trouble with this one part that the rest of the orchestra had too, so Mrs. Lim had them play it. She paused, looked at us, and said: "Cellos, show them how it's done.", with all of us playing with the basses, and then the basses playing it. This repeated five times before Mrs. Lim decided the basses were so bad that she said:
"Violas, help them."
This went on five more times. They still could not play the part.
"Second violins, help them."
At this point, almost the entire orchestra was helping. Four times later, she said to basses after their turn doing it alone:
"That will have to do."
They were behind, not together, and out of rhythm. But it was still not as bad as what they had been playing before. Mrs. Lim also told them to play better, or else it would sound like someone was moving furniture in the back of the stage.

At another point, Tweedle-dumbest was telling Tweedle-dumber not to mess up. While we were playing. Mrs. Lim yelled:
"STOP! WHO'S TALKING?!".
Tweedle-dumbest pointed at Tweedle-dumber.
"Him. He is."

I should mention that we have one good bassist. Her name is Kendra, and she is in the Camerata. The highest ranked orchestra. Because she can actually play.