Chris Erskine: Now batting, one mediocre banquet host
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I fancy myself the Mickey Mantle of mid-level fundraising banquets, but I am really more the Rip Repulski. Youâll remember Repulski from his stint with the Dodgers, no doubt, from 1959-60.
With a career .269 batting average, few players ever embodied athletic mediocrity the way Eldon John âRipâ Repulski did. And few people can lull a banquet crowd to sleep quite like I can. I am the Rip Repulski of hosting charity events, and Iâm proud to carry that mantle, even if it has nothing to do with the Mick.
I was at another one of these blowsy banquets the other night, in an overheated silent auction, gravitating toward the cash bar, as men are prone to do.
You know what a silent auction is, right? I donât know where they get that âsilentâ description, because most of the ones Iâve been to have been raucous affairs peppered with the feline squeals of women on their third Chardonnay. Theyâre called âChardonnay moms.â You may know the type.
Chardonnay moms are the sainted women who stage these fundraisers. Spring is their hunting season, and if you own any kind of business â a restaurant, a boutique, a theme park â youâve probably been approached by one of these do-gooders seeking auction prizes.
They are persistent and they are lovely and they are persistent, I mightâve mentioned that, so when they approach me to host one of their fundraising banquets, I pretend not to speak the language.
âNo comprende, sâil vous plait,â is what I say.
With some people this works, but not with the pretty and persistent Chardonnay moms, most of whom speak several languages.
âWe will teach you English!â they say, nodding vigorously to one another. âWe can teach him, canât we, ladies?â
âOf course, of course, of course, of course....â
âSoup du jour!â I say, and we all hug.
Fourteen weeks later, I am standing in front of a Marriott microphone that smells like salad dressing. At those moments, more than any others, all is right with the world.
Do you ever have those times when you wouldnât want to be anywhere else on the entire planet, even if you had a choice? Thatâs the way I feel in front of a room loaded with loaded people.
Itâs not easy work, but neither is it hard, especially if you have some sort of script or timeline to work from, which I never do. Instead, what the Chardonnay moms like to do is write a few important notes on my wrist, surrounded with skulls. Because, just before the banquet is about to begin, the Chardonnay moms turn sort of bossy.
Generally, I like that, for I have made a habit of surrounding myself with bossy women. Itâs one of the reasons I had two daughters, because at one point in my life there werenât enough bossy women around, so I bred some myself. And I dare say, I did a pretty amazing job.
But back to last Saturdayâs gala, âTwirl Till You Dropâ (a benefit for pregnant baton twirlers).
At one point in the silent auction, I find myself checked, as in a hockey game, into a table full of gifts. I am wedged in there pretty well. Just to make sure I get the message, one of the women throws me an elbow.
I get the message, all right â that this silent auction is serious business. I find myself in close proximity to a gift basket full of muffins. I have been in several long relationships, my current marriage being one of them, that did not involve this level of intimacy. So, naturally, I am in no hurry to escape.
Two hours later, I manage to squeeze away because by then I need to use the loo, which when I enter is in the early stages of a near-biblical flood, urinal No. 1 gushing like the Kern River.
I need to do something immediately, so I alert the prettiest woman I can find, who is just standing around the door to the banquet hall, hoping some joker will ask her what to do about a gusher in the menâs loo.
When I last saw her, she was headed into a scrum of Chardonnay moms. Honestly, if they couldnât fix a gushing urinal, no one could.
For dinner, I have the salmon â or the carp, only the kitchen knows for sure â but it is good, seared around the edges just the way I like my carp.
And the live auction, which I host, goes very well. For a weekend at the Indy 500, we start the bidding at $1,000, and I get them all the way down to $50. I later learn that I was actually supposed to drive the bidding up, not down.
âYouâre not buying a car, you idiot,â I heard one person mutter.
Oops. I take full blame, though the organizers mightâve shown the good courtesy to remind me.
You know, emcees are like sex: You get what you pay for. And sometimes not even that.
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