The Moroni Awards

Well, I was really gearing up all week for this awesome activity we were invited to. It was for the YSA ward (El Camino Ward) but we were invited (everyone knows us from Institute). So people or groups of people make a video (it was supposed to be about 3 minutes long each) to enter. Of course it has to have church standards--not hard. Also, everyone dressed formally--like movie stars!! The plan was that you walk in on the red carpet/butcher paper and our own personal paparazzi (a student of Brooks College--photography school--from the ward) took your picture. People would mingle, then gourmet food would be served. Then we would show the movies, like a film festival. There were a good number of videos, like around 15. Then they planned on having some time for dancing and then they would present the awards.
A couple of things didn't work out. It was a great activity nonetheless. Here's what happened.
Our friend Thomas is the activities chair and he was heading up the whole thing. Great idea Thomas!
Thomas was planning on getting little Moroni statues for the awards. He found some on this new website for an ok price and bought a bunch of them. Well, this business owner didn't seem to be giving very much attention to his online store. It seemed like he was running this online business after his day job. There was some messes, the guy was like, hey I overcharged you for shipping! I'll throw in some extra Moroni's! Ok, fine. Except Thomas paid for 3 day shipping--he wasn't overcharged (I think this is how the story goes). So Thomas emails him or something and the guy responds "Oh don't worry, they'll be there by Saturday when you need them"
Except the activity was yesterday (Friday). Thomas said well hey I wanted them by Thursday. The guy offers a refund and Thomas holds off and says that we'll wait to see if they come on Friday. They don't.
Thomas later told me that the guy had never sent the order form to the warehouse. They weren't on their way at all. Thomas will be getting a refund and hopefully a really nice apology. They used certificates instead, it was great.
Our friend Jason goes to culinary school and he's a great chef. He was told he needed to make gourmet food for 75 people. Overcounting, but they wanted to be safe. I took Jason to Costco and bought a LOT of food for the activity and we brought it back to our house--we are house-sitting and the refrigerator had some room. So then the next day (Friday, the day of the activity) Jason forgot that he had to work. He worked and he was over our house by 4PM and the activity started at 7PM. I told him I would help. We worked on so many things, the kitchen was full of huge dishes full of chicken and little tiny breads and such. Billy helped--he cut goat cheese and he hates getting near cheese, what a trooper! It was just the 3 of us. At 6:45 we called Thomas and said he needed to re-schedule the program so that they ate a little later--not 7:15. We had to cut the seared scallops from the meal. We had to cut some edges, it was crazy in the kitchen. Then we loaded it all up into our cars and drove to the stake center and we still weren't done when we got there. A bunch of people showed up and we were all putting the last bits on the appetizers. Then we could finally serve those but we still had to finish cooking the chicken. It was all so ridiculous, there were a bunch of vegetarians that Jason was going to make some ravioli for but the stove didn't get hot enough to boil water hardly. The food was delicious, I wish we could have had it as he intended it, but he didn't have time. Luckily we were able to help him. We were working in the kitchen putting together the food through all the movies until the last 2 or 3. They played ours second to last. It was amazing.

We made our movie the night before. We started at about 6:30 or 7 and submitted it to Thomas on the internet around 1:30 or 2AM. Billy had a lot of homework to do, and so he couldn't be in it. We were all bummed about that, but he was still involved because Billy and I came up with the concept of the movie. It starred me, Nick, and Jason. It's called "Science Fiction with real SCIENCE!!!" It's really good, you should check it out, especially since IT WON BEST PICTURE

in our acceptance speech, Jason thanked the 80's, Nick said, "Well, come on, we pretty much know we're the best", I thanked our gaffer, Billy (I listed him as a gaffer since he couldn't be in it, he gaffed the crap out of our film), and Billy thanked Sean Penn. I think maybe 8 people in the whole audience got Billy's joke.
It was a really fun night and it ended with an after-party (a small one) at our house. All we did was watch our movie, some funny hulu clips from SNL or something, and then we watched "Waking Ned Divine." Once the hot tub was hot, nearly everyone went home and only 2 people came in the hot tub with us. Oh well. The kitchen is all cleaned up, it's like it never happened! What a great night.

Here's our video: http://vimeo.com/4898836
Peace!