Wednesday, March 31, 1993

The meeting topic was Testimonials. The turnout was pretty light, but not too bad. We had the regulars, and that was it: Cathy Nelson, Bernhard Warg, Steve grades, Holli Weisman, Joe Foering, Andrija Popovic, myself, Neale Lanagan, Jen Hoffman, Andy Wilson (my brother), Dee Latona, Jean Prior and Rob Lindsay. There was also a broadcast/cable student named Ben who's doing a project on the Monty Python Society.

We started out with Cathy's explanation as to why Mark Sachs was missing from tonight's meeting. She claimed that he'd shown up on her doorstep, dripping blood, blaming the Japanese for attacking him. The one thing she could do to help him was to take over tonight's meeting, which she did.

Then we took care of business: namely, planning our Spring events. We set a date for the Great Ides-of-October Mystery Event in April, which will be a Coke-In at Old Main. We also tentatively set a date for the Mall Climb (it looks like we'll forego the Upperclassmen Twit-of-the-Year Contest this year). The former will be on Monday, April 26 and the latter on Saturday, May 1.

Next, we performed my skit, "Bad Taste Talk Show." In it, I'm a talk show host called Sylvania Syck, interviewing two people whose mothers have just died. My brother played one guest (Bronson Cheeks) and Holli played the other (Lessie A. Hamlet). There were studio audience members who jumped up and attacked them or made irrelevant comments. A third guest, played by Steve Gradess (Maynard Coffindaffer) had recently written a book, It's All Your Fault, and was in fact the same character from the Undertaker sketch (Monty Python, natch). Although (or perhaps because) the sketch was, admittedly, in bad taste, people really seemed to enjoy it.

[Note: Another of my classic MPS sketches, which has been previously unmentioned in this write-up, was "The Yeoman Smith Sketch," a skit which appealed to all the Star Trek: Next Generation fans in the club.]

Let's see. There was another sketch, an April Fool's murder mystery. Jen and Neale were a depraved suburban couple who had been responsible for 22 murders. Steve was Inspector Frog, who was an inept investigator. Andrija and Joe played two FBI agents and adlibbed all their lines. [Note: Many MPS members were gifted at improv, and many of our sketches included a combination of written lines and ad libbed ones.] Joe pretended he was Special Agent Dale Cooper (from the television series Twin Peaks), speaking into an imaginary tape recorder.

"Diane, got saddled with a looney."

Once, as they were leaving the room on one of their many exits, Andrija adlibbed, "I could have been a film major! But no, my dad wanted me to do something productive!" That got a big laugh.