This one came to me in the mail. Had to share:
August, 1998, Montevideo, Uruguay
Paolo Esperanza, bass-trombonist with the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay,
in a misplaced moment of inspiration, decided to make his own
contribution to the cannon shots fired as part of the orchestra's
performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at an outdoor children's
concert.
In complete seriousness he placed a large, ignited firecracker, which
was equivalent in strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his
aluminum straight mute and then stuck the mute into the bell of his
quite new Yamaha in-line double-valve bass trombone.
Later, from his hospital bed he explained to a reporter through
bandages on his mouth, "I thought that the bell of my trombone would
shield me from the explosion and, instead, would focus the energy of
the blast outward and away from me, propelling the mute high above
the orchestra, like a rocket."
However, Paolo was not up on his propulsion physics, nor qualified
to use high-powered artillery, and in his haste to get the horn up
before the firecracker went off, he failed to raise the bell of the
horn high enough so as to give the mute enough arc to clear the
orchestra. What actually happened should serve as a lesson to us
all during those delirious moments of divine inspiration. First,
because he failed to sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the
blast propelled the mute between rows of players in the woodwind and
viola sections of the orchestra, missing the players and straight
into the stomach of the conductor, driving him off the podium and
directly into the front row of the audience.
Fortunately, the audience was sitting in folding chairs and thus
they were protected from serious injury, for the chairs collapsed
under them, passing the energy of the impact of the flying conductor
backwards into the row of people sitting behind them, who in turn
were driven back into the row behind and so on, like a row of dominos.
The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling
on their behinds increased logarithmically, adding to the overall
sound of the cannon and brass playing as constitutes the closing
measures of the Overture.
Meanwhile, all of this unplanned choreography not withstanding, back
on stage, Paolo's Waterloo was still unfolding. According to Paolo,
"Just as I heard the sound of the blast, time seemed to stand still.
Everything moved in slow motion. Just before I felt searing pain in
my mouth, I could swear I heard a voice with an Austrian accent say,
"fur every akshon zer iz un eekvul un opposeet reakshon!" Well, this
should come as no surprise, for Paolo had set himself up for a textbook
example of this fundamental law of physics.
Having failed to plug the leadpipe of his trombone, he allowed the
energy of the blast to send a superheated jet of gas backwards through
the mouthpipe of the trombone, which excited the mouthpiece, burning
his lips and face. The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet. The
force of the blast was so great it split the bell of his shiny Yamaha
right down the middle, turning it inside out while at the same time
propelling Paolo backwards off the riser. And for the grand finale,
as Paolo fell backwards he lost his grip on the slide of the trombone,
allowing the pressure of the hot gases coursing through the horn to
propel the trombone's slide like a double golden spear into the head
of the 3rd clarinetist, knocking him unconscious and fracturing his
skull. I would think the moral of this story is--Beware the next
time you hear someone in the trombone section yell out, "Hey, ya'll,
watch this!"
Bob Kasenchak <[log in to unmask]
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