MythOff USA 2013 - Getting our myth on!

Guess what?!
The 2013 MythOff season is off to an Amazing start! With a capital A! And possibly glitter!

Now that it is all said and done, I can confess that Cathy Jo and I took a gamble on this one. Since last time the Vault at Capone's (I mean, seriously, look at the name!) was such a fabulous venue to hold a mythical event in, we decided that even though this time around we needed to pay hard cash for renting it (smiles and pretty eyes only go so far, people), we were going to take that risk for keeping MythOff epic.
Boy are we happy we did it!

We had an honestly surprising turnout. For one, we offered a prize for whoever brings the most guests - it was won by a landslide by Griffin who brought in plus eight, all enthusiastic and eager for mythology. The prize was a pretty green paper butterfly - for social butterflies. Yes, we went there.

As for the menu of the day:

Round one - New Beginnings
Yours truly opened the evening with the Russian myth of Koschei the Deathless. I have been knee deep in this story for a few weeks now, and it was a lot of fun to tell it!
In the other corner was our very own Dr. Delanna Reed, in league with the Romans, who told us about the burning of Troy. It was an amayingly strong story choice, and a powerful delivery.
The prize for the round was a pear, that symbolized an apple (hobby shop was out of apples), that symbolized life and seeds and other symbolic stuff. I ended up winning the pear, and had tu endure all the puns that ensued. I didn't mind.

Round two - Elements
Joshua's element of choice was water - he told a mermaid story from Finland. It was beautiful and Joshua-like colorful, but at the same time seasoned with a tad of humor. Okay, maybe more than a tad. Whatever a tad is. It was fun.
After water, Griffin brought the fire with a part of the Nart epic (I feel a rap rhyme somewhere in there). He is a newcomer to the MythOff but I have known him for a long time as an awesome Scion game master, so I had no doubts he could pull off some mythical art. And he did. His telling was fun and quick and snappy and all-around a good time. He took the Burning Candle of Epic as his prize.

Round three - Music
We had a small mishap in this round: Marci who was supposed to represent China tonight got terribly sick and could not make it. Good think we are saturated in storytelling around here: we turned to our mentor Dr. Joseph Sobol who seemed to be willing to pull a myth out of his hat. Bringing in the Greeks he told Orpheus and Eurydice, and it was a touching and graceful telling if I have ever heard one.
In the other corner stood Cathy Jo, who had the luck of drawing South America from the hat. She told a Bolivian myth abouth the goddess of Chaos marrying the god of Order. Because that always works out peachy doesn't it? Cathy is a really good "adult" storyteller - which means yes she talks about sex in very sexy ways. She also talks about a lot of other stuff, in very smart ways. No wonder she got the Bluejay of Musical Mythology, which promptly ended up sitting in her hair.

All in all, we had a really nice cozy theme going on, with fire, broken marriages, locked doors, and people being chained to mountains. Because we only had 6 tellers everyone got 15 minutes - but maybe because of that exact rule of temporal freedom, nobody went over 13. We filed that away for future reference.

In-between stories and rounds people drank fancy cocktails at the bar, mingled, talked, and had a good time. It was a nice group of about 30, maybe 40 people, including a journalist who just happened to wonder in because the door was open. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the atmosphere, the myths, and the event in general.

All is well if it ends well: our generous and enthusiastic audience kept throwing money at us, so we did break even in the end, which, as our delightful host Brandon put it, is really a bargain at fifty cents a myth. Capone's was happy, the audience was happy, we were super happy, and the myths were epic.

Stay tuned for the sound recording in the next few days, I'm gonna go crash now.