Partymeister

So I plan two types of activities: church and personal. Although the two usually involve the same people, there is a big difference between the two.

For instance, my last church activity was Newsies Night. Now you’re probably thinking this was lame, because Newsies is lame, but it was pretty awesome. I basically turned the watching of Newsies into a Mormon Rocky Horror Picture Show. I watched Newsies 2.5 times (that part was pretty lame), coming up with different ways for the audience to interact with the movie. Everyone yells Nerd whenever they say Dave’s name, and Yee-haw when they say Cowboy. I provided wiffleballs for people to throw at the screen to try to hit different targets throughout the movie. People had newspapers to rip up and squirt guns to shoot when they yelled “Soak ‘em.” I was going to have printed copies of the lyrics waiting for everyone, but luckily the DVD has a feature where the lyrics run at the bottom of the screen like a Sing-Along. We had hotdogs, popcorn and drinks in the back to enjoy when you got tired of singing Santa Fe as loud as you could. I think that if I were in Provo this activity would’ve spread like wildfire across the stakes.

My last personal activity was Poker Night. We had 4 pairs enter the tournament (I manage to fit dating in every so often) which admittedly was 1 pair too many to play 7 Card Stud. To fit with my original concept of Appearance of Evil Night we had IBC, Tootsie-pop cigarettes and a plentiful supply of poker chips that I had found on sale. We spent the first third of the evening eating subs from our new favorite sub shop and just generally hanging out. Then I taught the group how to play draw, stud and hold-em poker. At the end of the night we gave prizes (mostly chocolate-based) to the top chip-holders (which definitely was not me.) We finished off the evening by watching Casino Royale, since it’s really a waste of any evening to not use our giant TV. We may have a second round in the next few weeks using Maverick.

I think both activities were pretty successful. But it’s interesting how there’s no way I’d exchange the personal activity for a ward one, or vice versa. The next ward activity will be an American Gladiators picnic, and the next personal one may be a Spiderman countdown. If I’m writing in my blog at all by that point, I’ll let you know how they go.