10:09 a.m. - 2005-03-21
Luck of the Irish Man Thighs
So on friday, I had to go to this awards dinner. It was rather fancy, and was sort of like the Oscars of the Mon Valley business community. My organization was hosting the banquet at one of the local country clubs and we had booked a Leprechaun to MC the event. I knew the leprechaun was a woman, and I had this picture in my mind of the visual I was expecting. Short, small-ish person, in a bright green jump suit of some sort and maybe a hat. Very spry and high energy. Maybe some striped green and white tights. You know, like the Lucky Charms character. I got to the event early to take care of some last minute details. My boss and I were standing around, waiting for guests to arrive, when.....in....walks...the leprechaun. The leprechaun looked like a cross between a troll and an aging hobbit. She wasn't even wearing green! She had this twisted walking stick and a pipe and glasses and a beard. And she walked very, very slowly and talked very slowly.
She walked around and greeted people and made conversation in an Irish accent....that was all well and good. But the part that had me first horrified and then trying really hard not to snicker...was when she introduced our key note speaker. Inst3ead of saying a few words and introducing him, she read his bio from the program, word for word, except adding a few little touches like instead of saying "Mr. Smith grew up in Homestead" she would say "Our laddy Mr. Smith hails from the land of Homestead." This would have been fine and maybe even a little amusing...except that the bio was LONG. I mean, like seriously long. She was up there for a full five minutes reading this bio. When I finally realized she was reading from the program, I flipped open to the page and my eyes almost popped out of my head because she wasn't even halfway through....and it already felt like an endlessly long time. And she was still in character...talking....very...sloooowly.... And she kept saying "...and furthermore..." when she would start a new paragraph. After I looked at the program I glanced over at my boss and she gave me this "OHMIGAWD." look. To make matters worse, of course I'm sitting next to the key note speaker, a local news personality, and he looks really embarrassed, because people are kind of shifting in their seats and getting restless. I gave him a look that I hope conveyed sympathy, apology and encouragement. Oh dear.
All in all it was pretty horrible, and when Mr. Smith finally got up, he said something like "Thank you for that THOROUGH" introduction.
Yesterday I spent a chunk of the afternoon watching basketball and soccer with a soccer fanatic who is slightly interested in March Madness. We sat on the futon while he screamed the F-word at the various soccer and basketball players while I cringed every so often at the continual display of man-thighs. Sports channels are dangerous if you're phobic about seeing man-thighs like I am. You never know when some European "football" player is going to score a goal and leap jubiliantly onto one of his teammates, wrapping his legs around the other fellow, flashing his hairy man-thigh to the world. EW!
