FUND-RAISING : It Will Be Wild, Crazy and Slimy in Thousand Oaks

Imagine having slime poured on your head. Or maybe being pelted with marshmallows and splattered by water balloons.

Sound gnarly? Only if you’re a kid. Or a parent who hasn’t ever gotten over the urge to slam a pie in someone’s face.

Well, if doing something wild and crazy--and really stupid--appeals to your kid or the kid in you, here’s your chance. Nickelodeon, the kids’ television network, is bringing its “Wild and Crazy Kids” show to Ventura County.

On June 5 and 6 the show will take place at Cal Lutheran University’s Mt. Clef Stadium in Thousand Oaks. There will be two shows daily, at 1 and 5 p.m.

The shows are a benefit for Tres Condados Girl Scout Council, which includes more than 9,000 Scouts in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. The council’s goal is to raise $50,000. Tickets for the shows are $10.

The Scouts are hoping for sellout crowds of 2,300 people per show, but don’t expect to see all the mania on the Nickelodeon channel. “Wild and Crazy Kids” is usually filmed at studios in Orlando. However, the network takes the show on the road each year to give kids elsewhere a chance to experience it.

And experiencing it includes eating it and wearing it.

“We go through a fair amount of whipped cream in a show--maybe 40 or 50 cans,” said Stuart Rosenstein, who manages these special events for Nickelodeon.

Just what they do varies, but generally kids compete in amazingly ridiculous games, led by teen-age hosts like Donnie Jeffcoat, a high school senior from Irvine.

Take the game called Pillow-Mania, one of the most popular. Kids whack each other with pillows, trying to smash eggs that are taped to their bodies.

Then there’s the Bucket Brigade, another favorite. If the kid contestants answer questions correctly they get to pick a bucket, the contents of which are dumped on their heads. It could be crackers, or maybe rubber chickens. The object, believe it or not, is to pick the bucket containing the green slime.

You have to understand that slime is OK. In fact, slime is so “in” that Nickelodeon uses it as sort of a trademark. A slime geyser erupts outside the network’s studios every few minutes.

Then there’s the game called Musical Pies. You get the picture.

“The object is to get messy,” Rosenstein said. And win prizes, like T-shirts or packages of Gak slime.

The show’s hosts pick kids from the audience to participate. And they look for parents who aren’t too squeamish to do something like perform a wacky dance.

“Some kids volunteer their parents,” Rosenstein said. One kid, he said, volunteered his elderly grandparents who happily received pies in the face.

“Kids want to get up there so bad,” he said. The hosts don’t pick kids who look passive. They try to spot excited, noisy, exuberant kids who are likely to act silly.

The show lasts about 90 minutes, and it’s one of several Nickelodeon is doing in Southern California in June, but it’s the only one in Ventura County.

Nickelodeon’s television show “Wild and Crazy Kids” premiered in 1990, but this is the first time the Girl Scouts have used the show as a fund-raiser.

Members of the Thousand Oaks Elks Club, the Optimist Club of Camarillo, and the Ventura County Professional Women’s Network, along with Girl Scout leaders, are serving as volunteers for the event. During each show, 100 volunteers will be on hand to help coordinate the games and work the concession stands.

* WHERE AND WHEN

Nickelodeon’s “Wild and Crazy Kids” show will be in Thousand Oaks June 5 and 6 at Cal Lutheran University, Mt. Clef Stadium, 60 W. Olsen Road. Showtimes are 1 and 5 p.m. both days. Tickets are available for $10 plus a service charge from Ticketmaster, 583-8700. For information and to purchase tickets for groups of 25 or more, call 529-8484.