Celebs have their way with yours truly
About high noon Sunday, I walked into the Davenport Hotel’s posh Grand Pennington Ballroom – and gasped.
Four hundred chairs were lined up facing the stage that, in a couple of hours, would accommodate the panel for the “Filet of Clark” comedy roast to benefit the American Red Cross.
Four hundred empty chairs.
There are worse things than being pistol-whipped in public by a panel of punch-line-packing personalities.
Listening to barbs bouncing about a giant vacant ballroom is my idea of a personal hell.
As it turned out, I had nothing to fear. By 3 p.m., when the flogging commenced, the Pennington was packed. Extra chairs had to be set up in back. A number of people stood gawking from the foyer.
Because of the wonderful response, $2,270 was collected in donations at the door. Bar sales raised an additional $1,100. Toss in another $149 in sales of donated merchandise.
Which makes a “Filet of Clark” grand total of $3,519.
Half the proceeds go the American Red Cross national disaster relief effort. The other half stays with the Red Cross here. Those who generously pitched in made it happen.
So let me begin by thanking Walt and Karen Worthy for providing the Davenport Hotel and all the fine fixings and staff.
Thanks to professional comedian Don Parkins. He came up with the roast Clark scheme, rounded up the comics and served as MC.
Hats off to the whizzes in The Spokesman-Review’s marketing department. Their clever ad campaign really helped get the word out.
Thanks to Spokesman-Review graphic artist Bridget Sawicki. Her swell caricature of my ugly mug was projected all over the Pennington.
A special thank-you to the newspaper’s very own Tricia Jo Webster. Wearing a sultry velvet evening gown, elbow-length gloves and a feather boa, Tricia Jo served as the official “Filet of Clark” roastess.
Ooh la la!
My musician buddies Joe Brasch, Dave Cebert and Kevin Dodson did their usual fine job. They played TV theme songs and rimshots and hollered “Hey oh!” after the best (and worst) laugh lines.
And of course, where would a roast be without a classy panel of roasters?
They were:
Comedians Jim Green, Chris Warren and Ken McComb, Debra Wilde of KXLY, Randy Shaw of KREM, Rebecca Mack of KGA, Verne Windham of KPBX, Tom McArthur of the Davenport, former Spokane Mayor Sheri Barnard and Spokane City Councilman Bob Apple.
These celebs helped fill chairs and kept the house a-roaring.
Who could have guessed ex-Mayor Barnard would be so funny?
She branded me as Spokane’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then she gave me a hideous lavender clam trophy that had been presented to her in 1991 at the grand opening of a seafood bar. Her way of getting me to “clam up,” she said.
Public radio’s Windham was in top form.
“Doug isn’t Stacey Cowles’ lap dog,” quipped Windham. “He’s his yap dog.”
McArthur drew some of the loudest guffaws by besmirching my past.
Doug “remained a trumpet player through high school, graduating from Ferris High with a 2.0 grade-point average,” he said. “That gave Doug’s mom a second reason to tell everyone that her son blows.
“Some things never change.”
And then came Rrrrandy Shaw.
Shaw did not merely show up to deliver a few lines. Shaw had the urgency of a farmer standing in a wheat field smashing invading locusts with the flat blade of a shovel.
I was laughing too hard to take notes. But I seem to remember Shaw wondering aloud why anyone would waste a perfectly good Sunday by having a roast for me.
“Have we run out of humans?”
Thwap!
He said I was living proof that not only cream rises to the top.
“Scum rises to the top, too.”
Thwap!
“I know Dave Barry,” said Shaw, looking down his mole at me. “And you’re no Dave Barry.”
THWAP!
Shaw was so good my 83-year-old mother, who was sitting in the front row, confessed afterward that she’d thought about attacking him with her cane.
Poor mom. Unlike her younger son, she’s always been cursed with restraint.