Last night, I was involved in a youth event that was modeled after the tv show "Amazing Race". I never have seen it, but apparently it is a scavenger hunt type thing where the contestants travel to different places and perform tasks instead of trying to hunt down random objects like a traditional scavenger hunt.
My assignment for the evening was to be at Ester Short park in downtown Vancouver along with my partner, who was my sister Andrea, and two other chaps that were to hand out their own tasks and clues to the students. All of us had on different costumes. The first one- Rob Williams as the "Task Master" was dressed like a homeless person and laying on a park bench, which was pretty hilarious because everyone was scared to approach him, thinking he really was a scary, drunk homeless person. After receiving their first task, they were to come to me and Andrea who were the "Dance Instructors". Our task was to teach each group (of which there were ten) how to do the macarena. After us, the last stop in the park was with Matt Butenschoen as the "Drill Instructor". He was dressed in some fatigues and had a chewed-up cigar to look the part. For his part, he was to force each group to do some physical activities such as push-ups and marching. Apparently, some nearby folks got really pissed off from all of the noise because there was a play going on in a building at the southwest corner of the park. Oh well.
Anyway, it was a blast. Andrea and I dressed up like scene/goth kids for our part. At first, we were going to be old people, but it takes much more work to pull that off. The thought of dancing the macarena while looking all goth seemed pretty amusing though. I don’t have pics of both of us (some other folks did get some), but I took a few of myself. I was fairly short on time and money to really go nuts with the look, but I modeled myself somewhat after the first goth icon, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus. When taking the pics, I tried to do my best to imitate the photographic stylings of scene kids that can be found on myspace. Here are the results –
If I had more time and money, I would have bought a half dozen steel or pewter rings and some neckwear. Also, I completely didn’t think of it, but I should have painted my nails black with a Sharpie™ or something.
Oh, and one funny story…....
Before entering the park, we hit up Starbucks for some eight dollar cups of coffee. The employees seemed to be pretty excited to see two Portland-xcore-scene-types in the shop, but the funny thing was when some girl approached us. She said that she saw us come in and really wanted to invite us to her church. Looking back, I wish that I had played the part of a non-conformist, naturalist, anti-deist, but instead we told her that we do go to church and were actually involved in a church activity accross the street. It turned out she is from the Church of God, which is-in my opinion-the group that falls between Lutherans and Jehova’s Witnesses in what they believe and their practices.
The end…...and Happy Veterans Day
