Seen it all

As I mentioned last week, I was in Louisville for the entire week at the Religious Conference and Meetings Association Conference. It is about as complicated and odd as it sounds. There are indeed some useful seminars amidst the glut of others, but that's not what I want to share with you about.

To give an example of the oddness of this conference, let me share this story. For the opening ceremony, the room grew dark, the stage colorfully lit on a relatively plainly curtained stage. Out come singer/dancers dressed in glittery costumes singing their original song about RCMA's 35 years. It would have been great... in 1974 (the year I was born). Jenny who was sitting next to me, said, "is it always like this?" Then she asked me if would be rude to take a picture with her phone to send to a friend. I told her they would take it as a compliment. But I digress...

To continue to paint a picture of the crowd and style of the conference, I should point out the "night of entertainment" artist. Before I tell you this year's choice, let me reveal the last two years performers: Shirley Jones and last year, Ben Vereen. This year in a decided move to the youth they brought in Wayne Newton. Rumor has it that they got him at half his going rate (which is also rumored at over $100,000) because he "can't really sing anymore". But again I digress...

I consider myself to be quite fortunate in that I've been able to see a lot in my life. I've seen big spectacles and little ones. I've been able to travel to almost all parts of this fine country and several others. But none of this prepared me for what I witnessed at the grand gala on Thursday night of RCMA. And while I thought I had seen it all, I consider my boss to have seen more (including I HAVE to add, Twister Sister Christmas Concert at Disney... a sure sign of the apocalypse). But none of his life had prepared him for this night either.

I will humbly try to describe the scene to you. Out comes a Mariachi style band. They wore the leather jackets with fringes on the sleeves, the sombreros and the tight leather pants. They were all from the same family. They started with a festive Mexican sounding song or two including some odd but slightly amusing crowd participation. They continued on into a set of German beer drinking music - getting odder. Then they broke out into an Irish, "Lord of the Dance" type routine - getting odder. They proceeded to do some Italian songs, a "stomp" dance routine, they threw in a patriotic set including "God Bless America" and then pushed into some kind of football helmet wearing, marching band, something. If this picture seems hard to describe and harder even to comprehend, then I'm probably getting you close to a taste of the show. Bizarre is a word to use. Bad is another. I finally settled on distrurbing as the word to use.

As I believe I mentioned the oddness of the RCMA crowd, I'll give them some credit. Once the German music hit a good third bolted immediately. Another third of us stayed in shock in awe not able to tear our eyes away from the carnage. Another third would be like the gentleman sitting next to me, gleefully awaiting the next preposterous change in music or dance, mesmerized by the "skills" of this group (the person who booked this musical group undoubtedly fell into this type of people). It was an oddly fitting cap to the week at RCMA.

I have vowed to never again utter the phrase, "just when you've seen everything", because frankly I'm sure now that I haven't.