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Ncyc 2013: The Phatmass Story


dUSt

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[attachment=3224:dust-sammy.jpg][attachment=3225:van.jpg]

 

Day -2: 9am. Me and Sammy Blaze start the drive from DFW, TX. An hour into the trip I realize I forgot the mannequins. We drive back. Additional 2 hrs added to a 12 hr drive. We arrive at Fr. Pontifex's house at about 11pm. His front room is littered with "Symphony and the Static" fulfillment stuff from his successful Kickstarter campaign. I sleep in his bed as he insisted on sleeping on his recliner. It's a "real" memory foam mattress as opposed to the knock-off brand I use at home. It was the best sleep I've had in months. I even left a tip for Fr Pontifex:

[attachment=3223:pontifex-tip.jpg]

 

Day -1: 8am. Me and Sammy wake up. I make fun of Fr Pontifex for the note his maid left him about taking out a broken light bulb out of the chandelier. He tells me the diocese use to have the maid come once a week but he told them once a month would be fine. I still bust his chops for having a maid at all. Ha. Three hours later me and Sammy arrive in Indianapolis and start setting up the phatmass booth. Takes us about 4 hours to finish. We are very tired and go have dinner and some beer. Yung PK arrives around midnight. I am the lucky one Yung PK chooses to share a bed with. It was the worst sleep I've had in years.

 

Day 1: Thursday. We get up, have breakfast at Steak and Shake. The breakfast skillets are the bomb. Here's some pics of the finished booth before all the kids pour in. Normally the first day is very slow, but we seemed to do a little better than normal.

[attachment=3219:pm01.jpg][attachment=3220:pm02.jpg][attachment=3221:pm03.jpg][attachment=3222:pm04.jpg]

 

We are taken out to dinner by Deacon Dana Nearmyer from Kansas City. That dude is a huge phatmass supporter and an amazing supporter of Catholic artists. We owe him a lot over the years and love him very much.

 

A selfie of Yung PK, me and Sammy Blaze:

[attachment=3227:dust-pk-sammy.jpg]

 

Day 2: Friday. Steak and Shake skillet breakfast again. Traditionally, this is the biggest day for sales. The kids loved the Atari 2600 we had setup on out two old vintage TVs. The best part was that it only captured their interest for about 30 seconds so it was perfect. The phatmass "NCYC 2013" frame was a big hit too. Unfortunately, after checking the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram results that night, only about 2 people out of the hundreds who used the frame actually posted it online, which was the whole point. So, on Saturday, we abandon the frame idea. Apollo showed up around 3pm. In addition to being the Great White Hype Man, he is excellent at closing sales.

[attachment=3228:frame.jpg]

 

Day 3: Saturday. Steak and Shake skillet breakfast again. We decided to deploy a new strategy this day. It was wildly successful. We setup a stage monitor under one of the tables, and hooked up a wireless mic. I took the mic out into the very wide busy aisle in front of our booth, and discretely read name tags of large groups of kids walking by. As they walked past the phatmass booth I said, "Attention Candice, Nicole and Megan. Yes, you three, with the fuzzy orange hats. Please report to the phatmass booth immediately." The results were hilarious. The kids were so very confused, but surprisingly, almost every group we called out went to the booth, where Sammy, Yung PK and Apollo were waiting as the "closers". I had great fun messing with the brains of the youth that day.

 

I must say that our neighboring booths could have probably had us shut down if they would have complained to the NCYC officials for being too loud and rowdy, but they were amesome. Please go like their Facebook pages and tell them phatmass sent you: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jaime-Thietten/44954963442 and https://www.facebook.com/avemariapress

 

A selfie of me, Apollo and Sammy Blaze:

[attachment=3230:dust-paul-sammy.jpg]

 

We made about $7000, which is about $2000 better than NCYC 2011. Our expenses and product costs came to about $6000. So, overall, we'll have about $1000 profit from this trip for some phatmass projects.

[attachment=3231:money.jpg]

 

Day 4: Sunday. The looooong ride home. Me and Sammy leave about 9am, catch mass at The Basilica in St Louis, and proceed to drive all day, eating White Castle and gas station food the entire way. Dropped Sammy off at about 1am and got home myself around 2am.

[attachment=3229:stlouis.jpg]

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Oh, I forgot that on one of the days this weird dude comes up to me and calls me by my name. He looked very lost and lonely, so I asked him if he had any friends. At that point he ran away frightened, and came back a little later with several people who appeared to have been paid to take a picture with him. I tried to be very nice.

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PhuturePriest

Oh, I forgot that on one of the days this weird dude comes up to me and calls me by my name. He looked very lost and lonely, so I asked him if he had any friends. At that point he ran away frightened, and came back a little later with several people who appeared to have been paid to take a picture with him. I tried to be very nice.

 

The real story is that I was with my group of friends, but then I saw the Phatmass table and ran towards it without seeing if my friends were following me. I walked up to Sammy Blaze and asked him where Dust was, and he pointed behind me where Dust was taking a picture of kids in the frame. I walked up and said hi, and he asked me if I had any friends so I could take a picture with them. I looked around, confused, because I didn't realize they weren't with me, told him I would be right back, and ran a small distance in order to find them.

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By the way, Dust, what did you think of the emcee and his... interesting approaches to life and Catholicism?

 

I no longer attend the NCYC sessions or general assembly because I get too angry.

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PhuturePriest

I no longer attend the NCYC sessions or general assembly because I get too angry.

 

I can see why. Jason Evert, Chris Stefanick, and Matt Maher were pretty much the only really solid Catholic speakers. All the others were like "Emotions and feelings are what's important! Theology is dumb! Hold hands and sing, kids!" The emcee in particular was bad. He even made an awful chant for us to do every time he spoke that kind of tells the whole story: "Where is the Church?" "Right here!" "And?" "Everywhere!" "How do we live our Faith?" "All are welcome!"

 

First off, the bolded sentence makes no grammatical sense. Secondly, that is not how we live our faith. We live it faithfully, devoutly, devotedly, heck, we can even throw in something crazy like the Sacraments or something, but all being welcome is not how we live our faith, that's an aspect of the faith. Totally different thing. But that chant really does tell everyone what his priorities are. I did have an awesome conversation with seminarians about him and his yoyo theology, though, so that was fun.

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I no longer attend the NCYC sessions or general assembly because I get too angry.

 

i remember one year you tried to get me to ditch the group I was chaperoning and go drink beer instead. LOL

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PhuturePriest

the booth looked really really amesome, glad things went better than the last NCYC. :)

 

Both of my CYO leaders said that this year ran a lot more smoothly than the last one. They said last year they were never able to attend sessions together because this or that kid always needed help with something, but this time they spent almost the entire time together going to the sessions they wanted to go to.

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