Posted in
prank,
seminary,
talent shows,
talent shows that suck
"22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.
23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant..." [Matthew 25: 22-26]
This scripture is often invoked when church-related talent shows roll around, and the activities committee wants to guilt people into participating. And even though Jesus is actually talking about money and not talents, that doesn't matter--you either participate or you're a wicked and slothful servant.
Well one year in smeinary, I think it was 11th grade, Matt McNabb, James Belliston, and I decided we would participate. [I think it was the same year I signed Pablo up for the talent show under the act "Talking Fast", much to his surprise]
But, of course, the three of us had no intention of taking it seriously. In fact, this was our third year in seminary (James' second) and we were thoroughly bored with the usual routines. At least 75% of any Mormon talent show is piano-playing, the rest is aucustic guitar with bad vocals. Once in a while other acts appear, like a dance of some kind, or a bunch of boys will lip-sync to some boy band to "be funny".
That's the gist of it. And it's always the same stuff everytime. Sometimes the exact same piano piece is played multiple times. It really gets old. Especially because my seminary was full of people, mostly boys, who wanted to express their uber spirituality so as to impress the opposite sex. (Sadly this usually worked.) Sometimes even people would "rock out" to the hymns, or make church-related videos as their talent.
Boring, uncreative, and stupid... so we decided our act should fit that bill.
Now, I'm not sure how we came up with our idea, I think it was one of those, "This would be funny if someone did this" kind of conversations, which led to "Why don't you do it?"-->"I'll do it if you do it?"-->"Okay, why not."
Our act, as best I can remember, was for the three of us to stand up in front of the class and say nothing. We would each hold an object in our outstretched hands, random things like a set of playing cards, a gameboy, and a book. But do nothing with them, in fact we'd do nothing at all. We'd make no expression, not even smile, and remain completely silent and non-responsive. Doing absolutely nothing for as long as possible. The game was to see how much time we could kill, and how long it took before the teachers booted us off the metaphorical stage.
Well, we did it, for better or worse. And I think we got on several peoples nerves, which was a bonus. But eventually we broke character starting with me, I cracked a smile before lond and then began laughing outright at the absurdity of the whole thing. Matt and James, to their credit, kept it together until I'd fallen apart, then, like dominos, they too fell over and laughed. With smiles on our faces we went back to our seats, kind of surprised we'd actually done something so stupid.
All told, I think our "act" lasted for all of three minutes. Long enough to confuse people, especially since on paper we'd labeled our act as team juggling.
Anyway, add that to the running list of seminary shenanigans.
23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant..." [Matthew 25: 22-26]
This scripture is often invoked when church-related talent shows roll around, and the activities committee wants to guilt people into participating. And even though Jesus is actually talking about money and not talents, that doesn't matter--you either participate or you're a wicked and slothful servant.
Well one year in smeinary, I think it was 11th grade, Matt McNabb, James Belliston, and I decided we would participate. [I think it was the same year I signed Pablo up for the talent show under the act "Talking Fast", much to his surprise]
But, of course, the three of us had no intention of taking it seriously. In fact, this was our third year in seminary (James' second) and we were thoroughly bored with the usual routines. At least 75% of any Mormon talent show is piano-playing, the rest is aucustic guitar with bad vocals. Once in a while other acts appear, like a dance of some kind, or a bunch of boys will lip-sync to some boy band to "be funny".
That's the gist of it. And it's always the same stuff everytime. Sometimes the exact same piano piece is played multiple times. It really gets old. Especially because my seminary was full of people, mostly boys, who wanted to express their uber spirituality so as to impress the opposite sex. (Sadly this usually worked.) Sometimes even people would "rock out" to the hymns, or make church-related videos as their talent.
Boring, uncreative, and stupid... so we decided our act should fit that bill.
Now, I'm not sure how we came up with our idea, I think it was one of those, "This would be funny if someone did this" kind of conversations, which led to "Why don't you do it?"-->"I'll do it if you do it?"-->"Okay, why not."
Our act, as best I can remember, was for the three of us to stand up in front of the class and say nothing. We would each hold an object in our outstretched hands, random things like a set of playing cards, a gameboy, and a book. But do nothing with them, in fact we'd do nothing at all. We'd make no expression, not even smile, and remain completely silent and non-responsive. Doing absolutely nothing for as long as possible. The game was to see how much time we could kill, and how long it took before the teachers booted us off the metaphorical stage.
Well, we did it, for better or worse. And I think we got on several peoples nerves, which was a bonus. But eventually we broke character starting with me, I cracked a smile before lond and then began laughing outright at the absurdity of the whole thing. Matt and James, to their credit, kept it together until I'd fallen apart, then, like dominos, they too fell over and laughed. With smiles on our faces we went back to our seats, kind of surprised we'd actually done something so stupid.
All told, I think our "act" lasted for all of three minutes. Long enough to confuse people, especially since on paper we'd labeled our act as team juggling.
Anyway, add that to the running list of seminary shenanigans.
