Colin and AJ’s Christmas in Space

We had mixed emotions about the 2015 party and as planning got underway for 2016’s iteration, we were unsure of what to do next. The old model of an original composition with narration felt stale, but what else could we do?

At the 2015 party the now-long standing riff of “Colin and AJ” ideas (i.e. “Colin and AJ’s Christmas Under the Sea”) began during load in. We decorated the Centene Center with cheap Chinese lanterns and joked that one year we’d try to mount “Colin and AJ’s Christmas from the Orient” featuring a very racially insensitive Mayor of Christmas (this was not a serious idea).

Then one night in March of 2016 we were at the Scottish Arms tossing out similarly goofy party ideas. “Colin and AJ’s Halfway to Christmas Float Trip” was one of them, which we decided to create a facebook event for and invite everyone to as if we would be throwing a Christmas-themed event in June. We never meant to actually throw it, but rather to see how many people would commit to going only to back out at the last minute (the whole joke being that we could throw a “float trip” without actually throwing a float trip because everyone backs out of this kind of thing at the last minute).

So in June when we started brainstorming party ideas it was with this new “Colin and AJ’s ___________” framework in mind, rather than the more traditional parties we’d been throwing.

And then one fated day AJ, desperate for any idea that didn’t involve composing more music, threw out the idea of re-cutting, re-writing, and re-dubbing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for “Colin and AJ’s Christmas in Space.”

Our first themed party was born and we began our journey to the stars.