Introduction
Mistakes
Instant Style
Outside Assistance

Theme

A style performance's theme sets the entire mood of your performance. Thus, it is the most important choice you must make. To impress the judges, your theme must be happily upbeat. It must not reflect any problems in the world or controversial issues, or anything else about the world. Avoid these themes at all costs:

• Violence
• The Environment
• Race
• Gender
• Abortion
• Sex
• Religion
• Drugs
• Music
• Literature
• Art
• History
• Politics
• Love
• The Family
• School
• Work
• All intellectual pursuits
• OM

We suggest you select your performance's theme from the following list:

• Hercules

Story

After selecting your theme, you need to elaborate it. This usually involves developing an appealing story, with appealing characters. Select the best-looking member of your team. This person will play "The Princess". Don't worry if your team's best-looking member is a male; if so, you're doubly lucky, because you'll get extra creativity points for transvestitism. Now, you need to develop a story around the princess. Choose from one of the following, depending on the type of long-term you're doing:

• The princess is kidnapped by an evil frog. After several Broadway showtunes with lyrics rewritten by the team, he realizes the error of his ways.
• The princess meets Dr. Seuss, Mickey Mouse, and Omer. They sing a song extolling creativity.
• The princess gets in a hydraulic powered car and drives around for eight minutes. After several Broadway showtunes with lyrics rewritten by the team, she realizes the error of her ways.
• The princess performs a skit while a structure is being crushed. There is no relation whatsoever between the two scenes.
• The princess remains in character after the skit ends. As you discuss your solution with judges, insist that s/he is a real princess. Invoke the divine right of kings to order the judges to give you extra points. Fight with the prince, who is a foppish, boring man with numerous adulterous affairs. Threaten to divorce him.

Scenery

It is important that your scenery look as slick and well finished as possible, yet still seem to be made by the team. It must look like it could fall apart at any instant, yet its technical execution must resemble that of a fine artist. Remember, artistic skill and creativity are one and the same.

Conversely, you may also make your scenery entirely out of garbage.

Where shall your skit take place? The more fantastic, the better. The best place is a land of happy fairies, rivers of chocolate and candy-cane trees. One notch below is a forest full of cute little creatures and talking fauna. Outer space, while not up to fairyland standards, has its possibilities also. The prehistoric past is also fair game. The rule of thumb is: if it was shown in a popular Disney movie, go with it. Places with "accepted cultural value" suffice: museums and theaters are tenable choices. The worst places for your skit to take place are banal places: city streets, offices, school buildings, karate studios (gasp!), military bases (gasp! gasp!), garbage-strewn alleys (triple gasp!). But worst of all is to use abstract scenery done just for its aesthetic appeal. Judges won't understand it, and judges don't like what they don't understand.

Devices and Vehicles

Having machines that work perfectly, no matter how conventional, is key to winning. A working device is more creative than a creative device. To make your banal devices seem like wonders of the imagination, follow these guidelines:

Make sure your devices look as if they can't possibly work. Leave the wood outside overnight in the mud before you build. Have parts hanging off. Better yet, incorporate extra parts into the devices that can fall off during the performance, and have a team member pretend to scramble to reassemble the device before it fails. Have him use chewing gum he's strategically been chewing to repair the machine, or have him break off his shoelaces to tie a part on. What creativity! When the machine works, everyone will be amazed. Amidst the riotous applause, relish the Ranatra Fusca you'll be getting.

Be sure use a flimsy material like cardboard, Styrofoam, or dried spaghetti and index cards. If your machines big and have many odd, noise-making parts (not loud noises, just quiet, weird ones), as well as blinking lights, they have a good chance. If they makes bubbles they can hardly lose. Remember, bubbles are creative. Creativity isn't creative.

Fine Art

Some problems call for the use of art. Or you may want to incorporate some art into your solution. Remember, the only art suitable for use in OM skits is French Impressionism, because:

• Judges think it's beautiful
• They are familiar with it already from their coffee-table books
• It has no social, political, or religious content

Never use modern (abstract) art, because the judges won't like it. Never use art with any social, political, or religious content. This includes all other styles.

OM has done us all a service with its Great Impressions problem for next year, as it requires the use of French Impressionism. We should see many good, interesting skits full of water lilies, Japanese bridges, haystacks, and ballet dancers. Oh boy!

Music

It is common knowledge that it is much more creative to change the lyrics of a popular song than to write an original one. If you write an original one, the judges will think you're too smart, thus immediately deducting points. OM is not about smartness, it is about creativity, which writing an original song is not.

Costumes

You're most likely going to get judged on the appearance of one team member. Again, make sure to use your best-looking team member. Check out the judges on competition day. If there are more male judges, designate a female to be judged. And, of course, vice versa.

Here are some guidelines for making costumes:

• Remember, you are allowed to wear street clothes without cost. Put on hundreds of layers of street clothes and, after time starts, rearrange them to become costumes. An ordinary t-shirt can become a sling, a turban, a bandanna, etc. Design your long term problem solution entirely out of street clothes. (Note: now street clothes count toward cost.)
• Wear t-shirts with every letter of the alphabet on them, so if you get a non-verbal spontaneous problem, you can point to the letters as a communication system.

Overall Effect

By diligently following these guidelines, you will be assured of gaining the full 10 points for overall effect, as well as the scorn of your competitors, who tried to come up with something "original" and lost.

We hope you find these guidelines useful, and really look forward to seeing the skits you devise based on them. Really.

Have any other guidelines you want to see added to our Instant OM Style Performance Generator? We want to hear them! Send them to us!

Comments about The Instant Style Performance Generator

Bart Johnston of Papillion, Nebraska, writes:

I recently had a chance to take a look through your Edison OM web page, and I was blown away. I loved your commentaries on style and the reproduction in great impressions. I thought maybe we were the only ones who thought it was that ridiculous.

Oh yeah, by the way, my name is Bart Johnston. I am a senior at Papillion LaVista High School in Papillion, Nebraska. I've been lucky enough to be in OM since the 4th grade. Which makes this my 9th year. I've done classics every one of those nine years. It was incredible when I read some of your stuff and realized how universal these feelings are. It seems that every year, we come up with all kinds of great jokes, but then end up pulling them because they'd go right over the judges' heads.

Anyway, it was very refreshing to find that others face the same problems every year that we do. Thank you.

Alan Wagner, M.D. writes:

I think that the part about using the bubble gum or shoelace to fix an unnecessary part on a prop is hilarious. Just thought you should know

Matthew McMillan writes:

I have been hard pressed to find themes that judges think are just wonderful. ... maybe it is because I am trying to be to CREATIVE!

Logan Weast writes:

I read your style guidelines and thought that they rang very true. Maybe a few things to add: under characters, you should put in a part about the prince (or princess) getting into a swordfight. hardly anything is as "creative" as your very own choreographed swordplay. also, under props and scenery, I believe that one of my favorite quotes applies very well. "Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." Anyway, have you ever wondered where OM skits would bee if it weren't for cardboard refrigerator boxes, duct tape, and spray paint? I mean, without those, a person would actually have to do some creative scenery making, and we all know how OMers feel about that. Anyway, keep up the good work with your page.

The Jett writes:

Remember above all OM judges believe everyone is beneath them, if something is presented by a team and is not understood by all the judges, then it must not be creative, automatic loss of points. Also do not expect the judges to have everything set up properly. More than likely they will not measure the courses correctly or they will strategically place your performance area under a basketball hoop. OM judges are also known for their legendary gullibility. You can by a $100 dollar engine, and with the right amount of added grease and a couple of dents you can convince them you bought it for $20 bucks at a yard sale. The most important rule to remember when dealing with OM judges is this, they all have god complexes. If they feel you are insubordinate, if you commit such unforgivable crimes as not laughing at their OM jokes or not thanking them for words of advice you have already heard 10 times, they will strike you down by taking massive points away form all areas of you score and give you the most terrifying of all punishments: a "I did my best, I'm a winner" ribbon as you learn how many points the other teams all had.

'Dr. Jeff' Carr writes:

I was in OM in 1990, and we had a skit for Omitronic Humor, where I played a psychodoctor. The entire skit was slapstick humor. I remember the audience laughing at all of our humor but the judges obviously don't like slapstick. If I remember correctly, the skit that beat us was 'Green Eggs and Hamlet'. It was very serious and boring. The next year, a girl came up to me at an OM competition and asked for Dr. Jeff's autograph! This made me both happy and sad. Happy, because we had such a memorable skit, some ordinary schmoe remembered it and wanted my autograph. Sad, or rather very upset, that we had such a memorable skit and the judges thought it was bad.

LDRunnrMom@aol.com writes:

Just wanted to tell you how much I and my teams have enjoyed your pages...kids especially loved the Instant Style Generator...although it did provoke some serious discussion...talk about judging and not being "bitter" when our creativity is challenged by a subjective opinion!