MSPP #30: Singing In The Rain

The Boy Scouts of Troop 68 in Melrose have been doing an annual show called Laughs For Lunch for over ten years. The show follows a campfire program format and features songs and skits you may see while you enjoy a program at summer camp or a camporee. The Laughs for Lunch Shows usually last for ninety minutes or so. Both the Boy Scouts and the audience have a good time.

This entry to the Melrose Scouting Productions Podcast features five Scouts from the 1998 show performing an old favorite, "Singing In The Rain". I am sure you are very familiar with the song, but are you familiar with the actions that go with it during a Boy Scout campfire program? It is great fun to have the audience stand up and perform this song with the leaders. Try it yourself. It could be quite interesting to do this song at your next pack meeting or troop weekend camping trip.

Just for your information, it has been ten years since this skit was filmed with a vhs camera. These boys are now close to finishing college. One has even served his country over in Iraq. Gosh, where does the time go?

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MSPP #29: The Song Never Ends

What is the main reason that boys join Scouting? Is it to earn advancement? Probably not. Is it to learn how to tie knots? I doubt it. Do they join to learn to skills? Maybe, but I do not think that is the real reason. Do they join Scouting to have fun? Bingo! Give the man a cigar.

Boy Scouts like to have a good time, even more then adults do. When they are with their friends they can sometimes get downright silly. That is what happened on fall camping trip in 2003. While sitting around the Saturday night campfire a few members from the Hawks Patrol thought it would be funny to sign the "Song That Never Ends". And it didn't. For nearly twenty minutes they kept signing the song, with other Scouts joining in as the minutes added up.

A Scout had a "great" idea. Wouldn't this be a great joke/song to sign during the troop's annual Laughs for Lunch Show? The audience would not know what to think. I know what they audience would think, I thought to myself. They will think the Scouts have gone mad.

When the time came to plan the show's agenda a few months later I thought that maybe they would forget about this song that never ends. They did not. In fact, they decided to open the show with the song. A few Scouts wanted to sign it for fifteen minutes, like they did around the campfire. I vetoed that idea, however, we came up with a plan to sign it for a few minutes and then remove the Scouts one by one from the stage, to give the impression that the song was going to end. By force.

Today's addition to the Melrose Scouting Productions Podcast is the video of that song performance. I thought it went pretty well, and that the Scouts did a great job with it. It is a great example of how Scouts can be silly, have a good time, and share that good time with other people. What silly thing has your troop done lately?

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MSPP #28: The Mad Scientist Skit

The Mad Scientist Skit was a favorite of the Boy Scouts of Melrose Troop 68 for several years. It became a recurring skit in the troop's yearly Laughs For Lunch Show. The Scouts had a lot of fun with it and tried to change it a little bit each year.

This is a story about a mad scientist who has plans to take over the world! Of course, he has created a monster (like the Frankenstein monster) who will assist in his plans of world conquest. As he is finishing his plans, people begin knocking on his door. The scientist does not want to be disturbed so he uses his monster to take care of the unwanted visitors. Of course, by the end of the skit we discover that things do not go according to the mad scientist's plans.

The troop changes the visitors who come knocking at the door from year to year. Of course, there is the Girl Scout selling cookies, or the Boy Scout selling popcorn. We usually do three visitors during the skit. In this video, the skit does not end when you think it does. The Scouts added one little feature that carried over into the next act during the show.

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Boy Scout Pick Up Lines

I think it is time for a little humor. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I am not the one writing it. As I was looking about the world wide net I came across a site that had the "Top 10 Pick-Up Lines You Can Use While Wearing Your Scout Uniform". They brought a smile to my face. A couple push the envelope, just a bit. Read them and see what you think of them.

By the way, these were found at http://members.tripod.com/~BFarns/index-lines.html

10. I was going on a hike and my compass led me straight to you.
9. The khaki in my shirt brings out the color in your eyes.
8. Baden Powell really was my uncle, honest.
7. It's true; this arrow is a sign for virility.
6. Let's go identify wild plants in the forest.
5. Can I practice giving you CPR?
4. Yes, in fact I do have the Rabbit Raising Merit Badge.
3. Come on, I'll give you a tour of my tent.
2. I know how to tie 27 different knots. Can I tie you...I mean show you?
1. These pants really are made of polyester, go ahead, you can feel them if you want to.

MSPP #15: The Ice Fishing Skit

Boy Scout Troop 68's Laughs For Lunch Show has become a yearly tradition in Melrose. The Scouts, parents, and community have a great time during every performance. I have had every show video taped and played on our community access television station. Now, with current technology, I can post the best of the these shows on the internet for people outside of our community to watch and enjoy. The troop's website and the Melrose Scouting Productions Podcast (MSPP), in addition to YouTube, has been a great way to get these videos out to the public.

This week's post to the MSPP is one of my favorite skits, Ice Fishing. When it is done well. And the guys did this skit well during the 2005 show. Nathan and Josh had a great time and made up the "Fisherman 2000" while on stage. They knew each other very well through their years of school and Scouting, and could play off each with ease. Jeff did a good job playing the young fisherman.

The skit features two older gentlemen who go ice fishing but do not have any luck catching the fish. A young boy arrives on the scene, starts fishing nearby, and begins catches a lot of fish. Of course, this drives the older guys crazy and they begin to hassle the young boy. Watch it, I am sure you will enjoy it.

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MSPP #14: The Furniture Store

For eleven years the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 have done a community stage show they have named "Laughs For Lunch". This nearly two hour campfire-style show features the Scouts performing skits and songs for the audience. The public is invited and asked to bring an item of food as their admission to the show. All the food donated goes to the local food shelf. We provide the laughs, the audience provides the food, thus the name of the show. Clever, huh?

Each year there are songs or skits that stand out as being audience favorites. During the 2006 show the troop performed the "Furniture Store" skit for the first time. Sergio and Josh, the Scouts chosen to perform the skit, only had time during the meetings to practice it twice. I was not very worried about how they would do though. Both of them had done several shows by this time and they were comfortable at improvising during skits. Little did I or the rest of the troop know how well they would do during the show.

The skit is about a person opening a new furniture store. He choses people from the audience to act as furniture. Each "piece of furniture" has its own characteristics. The person choosing as the "oak table" becomes the punch line of the skit. Before Sergio went out on stage to begin the skit I asked him to choose our district executive, who happened to be in the audience, to be the oak table.

You could not have asked for the skit to go any better then it did. Sergio seemed to choose all the right people to play the pieces of furniture, and the furniture volunteers did a great job living up to their roles. The audience really enjoyed themselves.

This is the first of several videos from the yearly Laughs For Lunch Shows that will be a part of the Melrose Scouting Productions Podcast (MSPP). I hope you enjoy them as well as the audiences did when they watched the Scouts do them live.

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Comical Look at Cub Scout Promise #2

The latest of the videos featuring Buttons, the radical Boy Scout, has been posted. He is still trying to learn the Cub Scout Promise from Michael, the radical Cub Scout. Unfortunately, Buttons is not the brightest Cub in the Pack. I am sure you will get a chuckle or two from this, the second video of this series.

You can see it at:
http://melrosetroop 68.org/videobutt onsCub2.html
or
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=YCTPDokPBnw
(If you watch it on youtube be sure to leave a comment and rate it.)

Thank you to everyone who has watched the first of the Cub Scout Promise videos. It has
become one of the most popular videos I have made. Between the two sites it has been
watched over 1000 times during the last 2 1/2 weeks.