sataninthetemple

Satan in the Temple
This was posted to an online group on August 19, 2004.

--- In [email protected], cvanwagoner@a... wrote:
***snip***
> Anyway, I used to get a kick out of some of the old duffers who seemed to relish playing the part -- quite the theatah.
> Christy in Dallas

     I hate to respond with a simple ME TOO! But YEAH! No kidding! I was weirded out by the whole temple experience, and I went for years regularly to it. But the part that made it somewhat bearable for me was the live human actors.

     I lived in Idaho Falls at the time, and the Idaho Falls temple was one of the last few remaining to have the live performance. If I went to one of the newer MacTemples that had the sacred videotape version I always felt ripped off.

     Just as I do when I go to a movie nowdays and they don't have all the great stuff they used to have before the feature movie was shown like they did when I was a kid. Does anyone remember going to the movie and the whole thing lasted at least three hours? On Saturday matinees they'd have cartoons, some serial cliffhanger clip, some more cartoons, a visit from a clown or Sparky the Fire Dog, some more cartoons, the MovieTone News reel, More cartoons, and somewhere along the line they'd get around to the feature presentation. And you could get a bag of popcorn for 25 cents!

     Anyway, back to my rant (and I do have one!): The fellow who played Satan in the Idaho Falls Temple in the early-mid 1980s was totally amazing! It was always the same guy, and he dug his role. Satan was given all to good lines (the villain usually does), and this fellow
actually had grown a classic VanDyke beard and moustache which he'd sometimes twirl in the typical "villanesque" Snydley Whiplash sort of way as he was giving his lines. He had jet black hair too! He was the absolute perfect Vaudevillean villain Satan!

     The folks that typically payed Adam and Eve were usually a couple chosen from the participants who were "regulars", meaning that they
were usually retired and were active temple workers. In Idaho Falls they were usually some retired potato farmer and his wife who would
go up in front of everyone else (they were supposed to represent the rest of us I think), and sometimes they'd have to read their lines
from a cue card they held. Dohh.

     Jesus and God were BORING as steaming pig shit on a cold day. The whole thing about how god tells Jesus to go down and make a world yadda-fuckin-yadda was just so boring it made me sweat blood to have to sit through the same dialogue every time. It's like "Okay, I get the point here-we're supposed to be obedient!"

     I always loved it when they'd have to wake someone up in the crowd when it came time to stand up and put on your robe, or take your robe off and put it on again on the other shoulder, etc. Some folks would have won a contest for how loud they could snore in public.

     The part where you had to tie that stupid hat was funny. I noticed that some of the "cool" temple worker men had these more stylish
looking hats. I never found out where you could get those. It was like there was a secret place where some of the temple people could get the more fashionable looking temple duds that the rest of us ordinary chumps didn't know about.

     So anyway, when they'd get ready to tie the little string that attaches to the hat onto the little loop thingy on the shoulder of the temple robe, some of the old geezers in the audience had a real hard time with that. It was partly because they probably never dressed themselves anymore and their wives were over in the women's section and couldn't help them out, and partly because they had arthritis and they had to strain their neck around and focus up close to be able to see how to tie the damn knot on their shoulder loop thing. I remember many times waiting for about 5 minutes while some geriatric ward escapee was attempting in vain to tie his knot. The whole circus came to a stop because EVERYONE (of the men at least) had to have their fuckin knots tied before we could resume with the play.

     The Green Aprons were my favorite part of the outfit. I saw some photos from the Burning Man Festival where some people set up the
Planet Kolob Theme Camp where some folks had on ONLY the Green Aprons (just as Adam and Eve did after God came down and chewed them out for having eaten of the forbidden fruit). It was a riot! I always had thought that if the ceremony was really trying to replicate the whole Garden of Eden thing that we'd all come in to the ceremony in the first room butt naked, and then we'd first put on our Green Apron of embroidered leaves, and then eventually the rest of the outfit would be put on as we went from room to room. So actually seeing this photo from Planet Kolob (and BTW: kudos to those folks who put that on!!!) it was like "YEAH! That's how it should have been!"

     Of course if we'd all have come into the first room naked that would mean that I'd have to be in there with all these flabby wrinkly old
geezers and would have probably gagged.

     For me it was always a race to see if I could get up to the veil, cuddle with the male temple worker on the other side in the Five Points of Fellowship snuggle, and say the whole schpeel about how my dad was my personal god and how I'd be the personal god of all my kids, and then get to the wonderful Hall of Mirrors before anyone else. This was always cool to get there first because then I could dance around and see myself from behind echoed and repeated a hundred times. A couple of times the next person would get there and catch me in the act of cavorting around in the Highest Degree of Glory room, and give me a dirty look like "How did YOU get in here?"

     Ah yes, the good old days. LOL!!!!! I wonder what ever became of that guy in Idaho Falls who played Satan so well!?

~~Curt Allred