Practice is for losers.

Let’s face it. It’s hard work getting ready for a parade. You’ve got to figure out what those little runes on the weird grid paper mean, and which buttons to press on the trumpet mean what note, and which notes Henry Purcell preferred over your much, much more inspired notes. And those uniforms — whew, those look expensive, and a bit constricting under the arms. A man’s gotta stay loose. That hat looks like it’s an instant headache. And the fellow leading the convoy scowls a lot when you really start blowin’, man. You go to all the trouble to shoehorn In A Gadda Da Vida into Colonel Bogey’s March, and all you get for your trouble is a glare, and maybe a rap with a baton. 

Tell those stuck-up longhairs that you’re the only person on Earth that read all 16,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act, and parades are definitely mentioned in there, it’s open enrollment, and your pre-existing condition of musical malingering is no bar to entry to their parade. Then let your freak flag fly, son. It’s the law.