There are such things in this world known as Theme Sundays. The Childresses and I created these nights as a way to send ourselves out of our undergrad experience in style. At least that's the reason we gave. I think we just really love dressing up and love a good photo shoot. You have to know this to make the fact I made a documentary about said nights for my media in the contemporary classroom class make any sort of sense. We were sitting around on a normal Sunday night (which consisted of chatting, dinner, chatting and brownies that one person, who shall remain nameless, always said were undercooked. What does he know? I love him, but he's cray cray if he thinks boxed brownies were invented to be something more than warm chocolate gooeyness. Make em from scratch if you want something real. Don't worry, he's knows this is how I feel) and the idea came out. Wouldn't it be fun if . . . ?
So we started with Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
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| We always did our research. That slogan is legit stuff, people. "No US dough to help Jim Crow Grow! |
We found our most successful nights were holiday-based. So the next was Presidents' Day.
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| This was when the idea of a slogan was born. It really helped everyone get into character and gave great starting points for monologuing. |
And then Valentines' day, which was slightly less successful because we didn't actually dress up or do a proper collage. You can see how I felt about that.
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| We watched the movie Valentine's Day, I feel like that explains some of the floppedness of the evening. |
Our second to last theme night is the night we fabricated (actually on a Monday and not a Sunday, do me a solid and don't tell people in my class. My street cred for authenticity will go out the window) for the purposes of creating the documentary. It was Arbor Day. Probably our most successful night (because who can resist talking in front of a camera)
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| "From our earthy hearts to yours, we sincerely hope you planted a tree on April 30, 2012." |
. . .until we premiered the film. In our most clever of finale shows: Hipster Night.
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| At this point you've seen our other friend, Richard, twice. He just happened to show up from Clearfield both times for one kind of drama teacher thing or another. But on Theme Sundays, if you're here, you're participating. We didn't let him in the door Hipster Night without a solemn swearing that he'd dress the part. |
We were good at these characters . . .perhaps a little
too good, we went around trying to one-up each other about who was most well read in obscure books. I personally had a story for each item of clothing, carried a canvas tote with
My Name is Asher Lev and a book on Jewish photography for my Jewish Studies class. My sweater was something I helped an old Bolivian village woman weave out of Alpaca wool from her Alpaca herd. Just a sampling of how we mean business during theme nights. But it was exclusive and really obscure and pretty legit. Not to mention all natural and organic. How I will miss Theme Sundays. An era. An era, my friends.
