Entries this day: Houston_Rally_1997

Houston Rally 1997

SECOND ANNUAL HOUSTON RALLY 17-19 JANUARY 1997

Way back in like May 1996, I was called by Jason Fricke, and/or Nick Devereux to see if I would act as adult host for the Houston Rally in January. I was extremely flattered and accepted immediately.

Jason Fricke was the youth dean of the rally. We called him The Dean on th' Scene. I was the Host with the Most.

We planned essentially nothing until we pulled together at the last moment the Construct-O-Con (small planning rally) sometime back in October. At that rally we played all weekend except for a planning meeting that lasted about 2 hours on Saturday afternoon. I bring this up only to describe how we decided upon a theme.

It went something like this

Jason: Let's call it Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip Rally!
Rob: How about YRUU Con?
Jason: How about Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip?
Rob: How about YRUU Yukon Con?
Jason: What about Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip!?
Rob: How about you come to the Yukon?
Jason: Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip!!!
Rob: What the hell is Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip????
Jason: I don't know. It's just cool.
Rob: Well, how about something about the Yukon, because it sounds like YRUU Con, and it's gonna be cold like the Yukon??
Jason: Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip!!!

The conversation deteriorated from there.

We decided upon the title YRUu Conning Me?, and the T-Shirt design depicted a seedy looking eskimo thrusting toward the viewer a small can of Biff's Wonderful Clam Dip for $50.

That, officially, is my version of how we chose such a random theme.

After the first meeting, most of the planning was done over the phone. Tuesday before the rally, I was talking to Jason, and we wanted to figure out a cool cool cool Saturday Night Activity for the rally. We had considered an author, whose name I have forgotten Peter McWilliams? who has written on lots of controversial subjects to do something. We considered getting a band, or a street performer type person.

Then Jason said, "ROB!!! I've got it!! We can do a Casino Night!!!"
My brain said, "you kiddin' me? We've got 3 days 'til the rally..."
then my other brain said, "shut up, brain, we can do this."
So I said, "dude, Jason, that would *rule*! How can we pull this off?"

We brainstormed: "Well, we'll need some fake cash, and some prizes, and some cards, and I don't know what all else. " We jotted some ideas down and decided I would get the cash, and Jason would get the prizes. Jason somehow got a green felt Blackjack table cover and he bought some cheap but functional bingo cards. I bought a similar roulette wheel and we were in business.

We mostly had everything ready to go by the Friday of the rally. Jason and I met at SAM'S CLUB Friday afternoon to purchase food. Wow. Jason had his hair put up in two rows of spikes, so we got a lot of attention, especially from some older ladies near the baked goods section. I was wearing the rally shirt, with the seedy eskimo on the back. I wondered what the yuppy-lookin' people in the store thought.

We filled up one of their big carts, and then grabbed a flatbed cart thing and filled that up. We topped off the flatbed with 40 loaves of bread. Just over $500 in food. Crazy.

That evening, about 94 youth, 11 advisors all descended upon First UU church in Houston, and I was in charge of it all. Wow. It felt weird at first: running the advisor meetings, and answering questions from every direction. Taking charge is not something I'm used to doing.

Unfortunately, the first problem happened really early in the evening, and just totally blew me away. Money had been stolen from like 3 different youths' bags or purses or whatever. It pissed me off; I felt helpless. To have that happen at a rally is so entirely foreign; I did not expect to have that problem whatsoever.

Opening circle was cool, though a bit long with all the YAC announcement stuff and what I had to announce about my displeasure that some stuff had been stolen.

The first night went well, otherwise. Rovers roved and I gave answers. Strange to have everyone looking to me for answers. My decision. Up to me. It came easily in some cases. Sometimes I delegated or asked for input, but a lot of times I just told them.. Just quick problem solving.

It kinda feels like advisor initiation to host a rally.

I stayed awake till like 5:30 the first night. I was roving around and was surprised to find a touch group that just stuck together. They started talking at about 2am after opening circle and just kept on talking.. I joined their discussion about school, growing up, something else, and something else until I was just too crazy tired. Slept from about 5:30 to 7am.

The first workshop on Saturday was Government -vs- Personal Morality. It gave a lot of stunning questions to ponder- Do we pay for health care for the poor? How much should they get? Do we just keep them alive, or out of pain? Do we
enforce
health care for poor with infectious diseases? What about tuberculosis, with requires 6 weeks to cure, and if the treatment stops before it's complete, the result is a stronger strain of the TB virus???????

Before that workshop completed its discussion session, the drumming workshop began downstairs. I went down there after the morality workshop, grabbed a drum and joined in.

The next workshop was mandatory: a presentation then question and answer session by 3 members of H.A.T.C.H. (Houston Area Teen Coalition for Homosexuals) We heard coming-out stories by each of the 3 guys, and then were able to ask them questions. It was emotional, informative, and great.

After that, we started to set up stuff for Casino Night, the Saturday night event. During this time, things got a bit crazy upstairs and Jason Fricke came running down.

" ROB!! Somebody just put a hole through the wall *This* *Big*!!" he exclaimed, indicating about 3 by 5 feet.
I just started laffin. This was too fuckin' nuts to be true.
"I'M NOT KIDDING ROB!!"
"I Know!" (AUGGHH!!) "Let's go check it out."

So, with much support from Linda Loden, youth on YAC, and a couple of advisors, I had to get the rally under control, but I still wanted Casino night to go well. (I wanted to just shout, "Everybody sit down and be quiet or go home!!!!!" ) After thinking through many different scenarios, I decided to get all the youth up on 3rd floor and make them chill. A few youth were chillin' in the downstairs courtyard the entire time and I let them stay.

We herded everyone upstairs and had the advisors keep an eye on everyone while the YAC and I interrogated those directly involved. The end decision was that the youth who actually hit the wall and the youth directing the activity would pay for it monetarily, and apologize personally to Heather Lynn Hanson (interim minister(?)) and the reverend Bob Schaibly.

Then we got *all* the youth into one room and talked to them. I am highly indebted to Laura Moriaty for firmly reminding everyone how we all signed a sheet saying we'll abide by the Big 4 rules, including Respect of everything including the church. She reminded everyone how we are a community and how everyone looks bad when this happens. "How can the YAC get anyone to believe we're responsible if this kind of stuff happens?"

Once the verdict was announced, Mike Noyes was all, "why make them pay for it? If we're a community, everyone should chip in." (What a difference that made in the rally.)

At the end of the discussion, I said something like I was upset, but dammit, we worked hard to do Casino Night, and I want it to be fun!

Within about 15 minutes after everyone was released, about 140 bucks was collected from the youth to help pay for the wall. I described it later as "everyone anted up. 'I am in this community.'" It really helped bring the group together.

Casino Night was great fun. As people walked in the door, I handed out stacks of $271 (?) worth of fake bills, with the faces of the youth and myself who helped design the rally. I was on the $1, Nick Devereux on the $5, Nick Carter on the 10, Patrick Zinn on the $20 Jason Fricke on the $50 and Jennifer Warren, Amanda Hovland, and Charlotte Benbenek-Price together on the $100. Way cool.

Bingo, Blackjack, Poker, Roulette, and everyone who wanted gambled and had a great time. Afterward, we auctioned off fabulous prizes. toothbrushes went for between $400 and $600. pez dispensers for $1000s. Deodorant for $800. A can of Spam for multiple 1000s. A "bag o' candy" went for 1000s, which was pretty funny because it was old-ass chocolate so hard you couldn't bite through it. ("I'm sorry sir- no returns")

For every item, Luke _________ kept yelling, "Fifty Dollars!" because that's all he had, even if the price was in the 1000s. He began to get creative with his bargaining, and it went something like this:
"A night with Luke!"
"That's not worth 800 dollars!"
"Two nights with Luke!"
"That's not worth 800 dollars!"
"I'll give you head!"
Funny wacky stuff.

The biggest prize was the gumball machine, so we sold it last. Jason held it up over his head.
"1 dollar!" yelled Ben Atkinson.
"50 dollars!" yelled Luke.
"300 dollars!" yelled someone else.
"Five Thousand Dollars!!!" yelled someone over the din.

The crowd cheered and the someone added their 300 dollars to the 5000 dollars and the 50 dollars was chipped in to make the gumball machine sale go for $5350. Great fun. The funny funny funny funniest part was that the gumball machine required a penny to let you have a piece of gum!!!

Then the No Talent Talent Show and Mike Noyes did a rap to drumming and Debe Barnes and Bobby Hall pantomimed "Bish Bish" and we had no idea what in the world it was until the walked back to their seats laffin' "That was Bish Bish!!!" At the end Nick Devereux did a 15 minute version of the Fuck You Clown joke.

Midnight worship happened at 2am and we basically just sat in a circle and verbally tossed in good thoughts about the rally or whatever.

After that, I played silent football with some of the best silent football players from 2am till 5:30 am Saturday night after having been awake since Friday morning (except for 1.5 hour nap) This was the first game where Carina Dormio and I got to play together after nearly a year of challenging each other. - this dates back all the way to Dallas Rally 1996 where she made me get a penance point by jabbing me in the side during the game and I told her she would *never* be able to get me another penance point again. Nick Carter was Mr Dictator and I got 1/2 penance point for sticking my tongue out at Carina (after she got 1/2 penance point for sticking her tongue out at me) During the game, the funniest thing was when the elevator would *ding* and the door would open and suddenly *blaring* random acoustic guitar and a wailing voice singing some random song would jolt the quiet of the game. It was amazingly funny, and difficult not to laugh and look to see who the heck it was!!! Also during the game, Kris Shallin sat in the circle, thereby tricking Carina, who counted him as a player and went out of turn. That was funny. Someone accused Mr Dictator for seeing Kris in the circle, and Nick retorted, "I did not say I saw any non existing entity between Mr Rob and Mr Jeff; I said that if Ms Carina had seen a non existing entity between Mr Rob and Mr Jeff then Ms Carina would obviously have been mistaken." Good job.
Mr Dictator lost the game. I had 1/2 penance point; Carina had 1.5. Ha.

I slept for 1 hour after that until wakeup time at 6:30am. I woke up the advisors and then went out to find Jon Whitten-Lege rousing the youth by drumming like mad on the various floors. The coolest thing was when he would get a beat going [Boom] [Boom] [Boom] [Boom] [Boom] [Boom] and then pause for a second and then doubletime [Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom|Boom]

I learned a lesson. When I'm the host of a rally, I need to get more than 2.5 hours of sleep. I really appreciate Debe Barnes and Linda Loden helping me coordinate the waking of youth and cleanup and getting them out. We were highly late getting out and had a quick closing circle "Good Friends" "Yogi Bear" "Beaver Song" and then had 'em grab a donut and head out the door.

Wende Whitlock saved my butt by being awake enough to do all the bookkeeping and stuff after the rally. I really appreciate her help.

That was it. A great rally and maybe we can do it again (without the hole in the wall) next year.

With Love
- Rob

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