We’ve moved

I’ve decided it was time to move the blog to my own domain, you know link it to my website and all that. So for you three or four viewers so far you can find the new and improved blog at www.balloonguyentertainment.com/blog

The much maligned clown

An innate awkwardness, too much makeup, feet too big for their body- no we’re not talking about the 12 year old girl before a growth spurt- this would be our undeserving enemy, the clown.

People fear him and hate him. Children go out of their way to beat on him. The media has portrayed him as both drunk and surly, or evil beyond the scope of demons and devils. Yet the tradition and vocation of the clown has not diminished in the past hundred years. Parents still hire them for parties. Clowns still perform under the big top. Ok, using clowns as targets for raging bulls in rodeos makes a kind of sadistic sense, but still: Why, if clowns are so feared and hated, are clowns still around today?

In the wild, a wolf pack develops a specific hierarchy. At the top you have your alpha male and alpha female who in turn strut their status on down the pack, each successive member putting the one below it in its place. At the far end of the social scheme is the Omega wolf. This wolf takes the brunt of the punishment for everything that goes wrong in the world, or it just so happens the rest of the wolves are having a bad day, or maybe they’re bored. In the end it reads like your basic high school clique.

In our society today there is much the same sort of hierarchy. Really, all you have to do is wait for someone to ask you what you do for a living and they will let you know your place in the scheme of things. Most people are polite about it at least. In my case, being a balloon twister, the response is usually- ‘Is this all you do?’ as if to say, isn’t there some actual productive role you play in society? Even lower than the balloon artist, even lower than your garage band musician that relies on the drums to drown out the rest of their music, even lower than gangsters, murderers, and cable guys that make you wait for hours is the clown. The only known thing lower than the clown on the totem pole is the mime, but we won’t go into that.

This is why parents hire clowns for parties. I think in their deeply scared childhood they too had a clown at their party and they learned a valuable lesson. Clowns aren’t there to be feared, they are there to be tortured. So they in turn, like the leopard dragging wounded prey back to their young to teach them how to kill, bring the clown to the party as a social punching bag. The clown gets punched, beaten, generally picked upon and the parents smile at the fond memories.

This is the real reason for the excessive makeup- to hide all the bruises before the next show. The baggy pants and the large shoes are for protection.

The truth of the matter is that clowns are people (Except for those killer ones from outer-space). The surprising thing is that most of them enjoy what they do. They work as hard or harder than the average person to perfect their craft. They don’t like to be beat upon, they don’t want to be hated or feared, but they understand the possibility is there. They do what they do in order to make that percentage of the population that isn’t inspired to vengeful thoughts laugh at their antics- until of course their friends tell them the real purpose for clowns.

So next time you see a clown, give them a smile, maybe even a chuckle. Help make their life’s purpose complete before you run screaming or send in the kids to finish him off.

It’s virtually a party…

Computers have occupied my thoughts a lot lately. (Along with images of axes, gasoline, and small explosives) Yes, reformating one’s computer gets a person thinking about how these little rectangular boxes keep us all connected. We never think much of it unless something goes wrong. Perhaps it is time to have a party in honor of our friend, the computer. Well perhaps not a real party, more of a shindig, a get together, but you know, it’s virtually a party.

The first impulse is to send out your messages instantly, and wait by the Windows hoping for a reply. After all it’s not a hard drive to a virtual party. Your cookies are all ready, your server is in place. Looking out over the Vista, you begin to see people arrive. You monitor their progress and have the server begin to load those cookies. You invite your guests in for a chat. You notice that many of your friends aren’t interested in the cookies and block the server’s attempts to give them any, many of the other guests only take small bytes. You also see that the progress to the bar is extremely slow, but it’s ok, you don’t want friends loading up on that stuff anyway. She’s trying to keep a low profile, but you CD in a corner and go talk to her. The friend she’s with starts ASCII-ng about Dell, and so you turn to the speaker. You explain that he’s a local icon, an avatar if you will, and try to get them over to meet him. They don’t want to, they think it’s a setup, the way you keep going on about his features. You persist until, in frustration, they claim you are trying to RAM him down their throats. You explain you are just giving the FAQs about him. All the same, you hurriedly excuse yourself and you go to start up the bandwidth a push of a button. In a Flash the party has started. Soon people you never invited pop-up and crash the party. Finally the load is too much and you find yourself disconnected from the whole thing. You consider calling for assistance, but before you can dialup you hear someone screen, “saver.” You rush over to help and discover someone has trampled your blue screen to death. You stand there frozen. The people can read your face like a book, and they begin to pack up their things. The richer friends leave with the help of their drivers. After the party you begin to clean up, taking down the banners, throwing as much as you can in the recycle bin. In the end you check, sheepishly, to see how much of your cache this thing has eaten up. The place still looks a little SCSI but you are tired and think to yourself, ‘I will clean Myspace in the morning’, so you walk slowly to bed, already in sleep mode.

Of course, you wake up the next morning with good intentions but are barely functional. Sometime during the night you must have gotten a virus.

How to host a Garden Gala

I decided to create a theme party specifically for my good friend, Nessa. She writes for About.com as their guide to trees and shrubs. She is a fan of almost all things green and growing (not including those things that can be found after vacation in the fridge).

This is a great way to get a bunch of friends together and help each other start, or continue, a garden. The more friends you have that are willing to participate the more fun it can be and the better and more varied your garden can be.

Here is the basic idea: get a group of friends, in February or March, and assign each a kind of vegetable, preferably ones that grow best after a few indoor transplants, vegetables such as peppers or tomatoes. If you’d prefer, you can actually make invites to the future party by giving each person a seed packet and instructions for their particular plant. Have each person make sure they grow enough starts of that plant for everyone participating.

A week or so before the last freeze of the year (consult your local almanac), hold the party itself. Swap different plant starts so that everyone has a good variety of vegetables. This is also a good time to swap gardening tips like how to prepare the soil, which plants grow well together, which need the most light, etc. You may wish to remind people how to harden their plants before transplanting them outside.

If you want to go all out you can plan one more event for harvest season. If your group decided to do a salsa garden then have everyone bring their favorite salsa recipes and a sample of the salsa for everyone to try. Have them make the salsa from their own vegetables (or as many as you could grow). If it is a more general type garden, have everyone bring a dish that highlights his or her vegetable. Or you could just have everyone bring their prize vegetable for an informal blue ribbon judging and maybe teach people how to can or store their harvest.

In the end it is a good way to learn, have fun, and keep in touch with good friends. And of course, brag about your gardening skills.

Party Types: How to handle the Malicious Lingerer

There always seems to be one or two people, especially at private parties, who, two hours after all the guests have left, seem to have made a home for themselves on your couch. They don’t try to socialize, they don’t look like they are having fun, they just won’t leave, and you can’t relax until they do.

How do you, the host, convince these people that the party isn’t coming back. How do you convince these people that it is time to go home without creating that awkward pause that says: “I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want you to leave, um, just as soon as you’re ready?”

The best way is to plan a finale into the event itself. Either a game or a contest that is introduced as: “Before we call it a night we have one more…” That way you are telling all the guests that it is soon time to go home rather than singling anyone out. Don’t be too subtle. If subtlety worked they would have left two hours ago. Don’t forget, after you do the event/contest, to thank everyone and wish him or her a good night.

If you didn’t plan a specific end to the party and you are at your wits’ end on how to convince your guest to leave, think about how well you know them. If you know them really well you likely have little to worry about. Friends can take these things in stride. Explain to them how happy you were that they came but that you would like to get some sleep before the sun starts to rise. (HINT: Don’t actually use those words unless they are a really good friend.) If you aren’t sure you know the person, perhaps they came with someone else, maybe they crashed the event, who knows? Odds are you will not ever see them again. In this case you can also be a bit brusque without being rude. Ask them if they had a good time. Did they enjoy the party? Wish them a good night. And if necessary, call for a police escort.

The hardest people to handle are the acquaintance/friends: the people you know and see often, they work with you at the office perhaps, but you don’t know them really well. These are people that you will see regularly after the party whether or not you ever become friends. What you do here is try to engage them in small talk. Ask them about kids/parents. Ask about the weather. What hobbies do they do? All the while look for an opening, a reason for them to want to leave. You have a 4-year old at home? I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to keep your babysitter up so late. Just try to steer the conversation as if you getting them to leave is doing them a favor. Also if you can get them standing this will be a great help. Ask them to take down a decoration for you. Ask if they’ve seen your cell phone. Anything to get them up. From there you can herd them more and more toward the door.

Any other ideas on how to convince the malicious lingerer to leave? Please leave a comment or two.

What Am I? -A pre-party opener

What Am I?

This is most often used as a theme game.
The game is not age specific, though it helps if all the guests can read. (Pictures can be used instead of words for a pre-literate group.)

Supplies Required:
Paper or 3×5 cards
Marker
Masking Tape

How the game works:
Each guest will have a piece of paper (or a 3×5 card) taped to their back with a word written on it. They must ask other guests yes or no questions to try to determine what the word is. Once they have guessed the answer they may remove the card but still help other guests to solve their words.

Gearing the game to a younger audience:
Make sure all the words are nouns, they are the easiest to figure out. Keep them simple and make it centered on a theme to get their young minds primed in the right direction. Make sure that the words are ones they would understand and be able to read, or stick with pictures if the audience is really young.

Gearing the game to a teenage audience:
By far this is the age that is hardest to cater to. Most of the time they think they are too cool to try anything. The best advice is to let a teen help you to plan out your activities, while maintaining veto power. They will know best if a group of their friends would be interested in this type of game and how to gear it towards their particular interests. (If it is a set of teenage girls it will be about 50 times easier to convince them to get involved than teenage boys.)

Gearing the game to an adult audience:
If you want to make it more challenging then choose verbs or adjectives as the words to use. Also, if you want to make it really difficult, the words could be chosen completely at random, though I prefer it as a theme oriented game myself. If we are dealing with intellectuals then perhaps make the words somewhat obscure and place a dictionary in the center of the room for guest use. Then those few who do get their words right can wear them on the front as a badge of honor.

Adapting the game to a theme:
Besides making the words themselves theme oriented, consider the following:
Christmas: Use red construction paper, cut into circles and then tape the circles with the words to the guests noses. The last one to guess their word is the Rudolph.
Valentines Day: Make matching words. Not only do guests have to figure out what their word is; they have to find their perfect match. (Though make sure they understand you aren’t really trying to set them up… unless of course that is exactly what you are trying to do.) For added mushiness, the paper could be cut up into matching heart halves that guests can put together after they’ve found their match. Be careful if any of your guests are married…

The options are endless, and as I think of more or more are suggested to me they will be added. Just figure out your theme and then think how you can adapt the game to be unique to your party.

Buying the Best Brand of Balloon Animal Balloons

This is one case where you get more bang the less bucks you spend. (In other words the cheaper the balloon the more it is likely to pop on you.) The cheap balloons from Walmart or your local grocery store are basically good if all you want to make are sticks, worms, snakes, and swords (without the handle). If you actually want to twist the balloons into shapes there are really only a couple of brands worth buying.

Qualatex
This is the brand name in balloons. Any balloon twister that has been twisting for long will always suggest Qualatex first- most of them don’t own stock in the company either. They have a good assortment of colors (over 40) and plenty of different sizes and shapes. Part of the quality comes from the thickness of the latex making them much harder to inflate orally- save yourself a migraine and get a pump. Quality does vary between the colors. The standard and fashion toned colors are the most consistent and useful. Jeweled (see-through colors) are much more fragile. Neon and metallic colors are hardy but a little bit more slippery than the others which makes it hard to use some twists with them. This is the brand that I use exclusively.

Betallatex
Apparently this is the up and coming brand. I haven’t heard much about them other than they are constantly improving their formula and that their balloons are a little bit stiff and squeaky. To me this sounds like all of their balloons would be similar to the Qualatex neon and metallic colors. They do have some unique shapes that Qualatex does not offer and both Betallatex and Qualatex have some colors unique to them. Until I actually use their product I won’t endorse or suggest you not use their product.

Either of these brands can be purchased at www.tmyers.com , this is where our business purchases balloons. They also offer discounts if you buy in bulk: 10% off if you spend over $100, 15% if you spend over $200, and 20% if you spend over $300. The discount only applies to balloons and makeup though- if you buy a video, the video itself will not be discounted.

Most novelty and party stores carry Qualatex balloons, though you will have to buy a bag of assorted colors rather than individual ones. Also the markup on the balloons can get a bit excessive sometimes. If they are asking much more than $6 for a bag of 100 balloons then consider buying them elsewhere.

Upcoming features

As soon as I figure out the whole format thing I should have categories ranging from party theme ideas to birthday crafts.