MORE THAN 2,000 TURN OUT TO GET `SLIMED' AT NICKELODEON EVENT

FARMINGTON -- They were standing on their seats, dancing like chickens and throwing pies in each other's faces Sunday when Nickelodeon television came to the Farmington Civic Center -- and their kids had a good time, too.

More than 2,200 children of all ages attended a traveling version of the popular kids' cable channel entertainment program. Called "U-Pick Nick," the seven-person road show incorporates all of Nickelodeon's most popular props like gak, slime, cream pies and 1960s and '70s sitcom soundtracks.

No one in the Nickelodeon production would say what gak or slime is made out of. "We make it each day from a highly confidential recipe. But it is edible," Bill Hurd, production manager, said.

Hurd did say the crew uses seven 5-gallon containers of whipped cream, eight cans of apple sauce, 4 quarts of food coloring, vanilla pudding, flour, 300 balloons, 30 to 40 gallons of water and one tank of nitrogen gas -- for each show. They also go through more than 200 towels to clean up during and after each performance.

"U-Pick Nick" is a stage version of Nickelodeon's game shows geared for children. Based in Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla., home to Universal Studios, the crew puts on about 120 performances a year.

The show featured "Pass the Pie," a kind of musical chairs performed with a cream pie. There was a game where the contestants dressed in chicken costumes -- complete with long-beaked masks -- and pecked at liquid-filled balloons in a feeding cage.

There was a variation of a basketball game where, if done properly, one team member would be covered with a thin, slimy liquid by the end of the game.

Host Bryan Stinson said the object of all the games was to allow the kids -- and their parents -- the opportunity to do almost everything they're not allowed to do in the real world.

"All their lives, kids are told to stay out of the mess, get out of the mud, stay out of the rain. But at Nickelodeon we make it cool to be messy," he said.

The child participants are often given the chance to slime, gak or pie their parents -- or they can have it done to them. He said kids choose to slime their parents only about 60 percent of the time.

Stinson majored in sociology, business and theater at a liberal arts college in Louisiana before moving to Florida and hooking up with Nickelodeon.

He said his parents were a little surprised a few months ago when they saw where their tuition payments had landed him.

"My dad came backstage and he said he was really happy and he was really proud. Then he said, 'You mean I paid $30,000 for you to go to college and now you're smashing pies and dumping slime for a living?'" Stinson said.

Brad Garrett of Police Productions of St. Louis brought the show to the civic center because he has promoted several successful concerts in that building and felt the show would be a hit.

Bill Brown, a member of the tour production crew, was one of the men responsible for keeping everything running smoothly but without being slippery. Stage hands were constantly mopping up pools of slime during the show.

He works with local stage hands in each town. Coordinating the cleaning and safe movement of the contestants and crew has been learned through practice, he said.

"The show is scripted," Brown said. "But that doesn't mean that we always know what's going to happen."