A fanciful tale about the best party of the year.
“I think a pirate theme would be a lot of fun.”
These words are delivered in an almost breathless exclamation from one of our interns, a likeable kid named Roger. I don’t know him well, so this is just a guess, but I’m thinking he has visions of Johnny Depp wielding a bottle of Captain Morgan and swashbuckling his way across the bow. From the faraway look in Roger’s eye, he’s already planning a costume for the party (one involving a parrot on his shoulder and an eye patch. The eye patch would be on Roger, not the parrot, but I could have that part wrong).
I’m at the far end of our executive conference room, as physically distant from the current debate as possible. The dialog is about finding an engaging theme for NorthBay biz’s Annual BEST OF the North Bay Gala, Awards Dinner and VIP Rodeo.
The annual party is a great time. How can you have a bad time hobnobbing with the most successful local business people, partaking of some of the best wines available in either valley, and noshing on a veritable feast of appetizers, small plates and tidbits prepared by North Bay culinary royalty?
Moreover, the magazine invites its staff along to the festivities. This may seem like an obvious thing to those of you not in the media, but I once worked for a publication company that held its Christmas party at a homeless shelter, and then asked the staff to chip in for donations.
Sadly, I’m not making that part up.
The reason I’m closest to the door and looking for the right moment to go over the wall is that I’m not a party planner, I’m not an event consultant and, as it turns out, I’ve forgotten my black-and-white striped referee’s shirt that would come in handy breaking up the verbal donnybrook going on over the whole pirate suggestion.
I’m checking email and wheeling my seat toward the door when somebody lets loose with one of those ear piercing whistles accomplished by placing two fingers in your mouth. There’s silence in the room as I debate if I’ve gone deaf (and whether that might not be such a bad thing in light of the whole “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” thing going on at the other end of the room). But then Norm Rosinski, our publisher and my boss, is on his feet and I’m instantly hopeful that the meeting may be coming, mercifully, to an end.
“This bickering is getting us nowhere, and I’d like to remind everyone that we need to encourage each other and be creative. I don’t see how threatening to make Roger walk the plank is constructive, nor is referring to him as ‘Jolly Roger.’” Norm levels the room with one of those parental looks that says, “If this ever happens again I will not pay your bail, and you owe me one car—and what were you doing driving with your head sticking out through the sun roof, steering with your feet?”
OK, maybe that was just my parents.
“Why don’t we go around the table and see if we can’t find a good fit,” Norm suggests.
This is not good news. To be honest, I’ve been working on my laptop trying to knock out a column that was due yesterday. So I’m not entirely sure what themes have been discussed already. Also, as I may have stated before, I went to school to become a journalist.
(Actually, that’s not entirely true. At one point, I was quite convinced I wanted to become a captain of industry. I wanted to contribute mightily to the gross national product. I wanted to create jobs benefiting my community. And I wanted to employ a small cadre of high-powered attorneys who would do their level best to keep me from being prosecuted by the SEC.
Alas as turns out, to be a titan of industry, you have to be able to do math. And, as my college counselor was fond of telling me, “Science isn’t your friend either.” This left journalism and teaching, and the consensus was that I’d never be good with kids because I was one.)
It’s not that I didn’t plan some parties in college. Au contraire. I went to Chico State, where our football team never attained a Top 25 finish, but we were ranked annually among the Top 10 Party Schools. But the party themes back then were fairly pedestrian, revolving around chemical abuse and temporarily swearing a deep affection and allegiance to various co-eds. And the only planning that took place was finding the cheapest kegs and a brand of tequila that didn’t double as paint thinner.
Norm calls on one of our sales staff, who suggests a theme revolving around the world champion San Francisco Giants. This choice catches a little heat as some feel the whole baseball theme has already been overdone since last fall and, with the new season already underway, it will seem redundant anyway.
I’m not one of those critics poo-pooing the idea. “What’s the matter with you folks?” I ask, rising to the defense of my colleague. “Nobody’s tired of the Giants being champs; it took them 54 years to deliver the goods. Not only that, but the costume aspect is so strong, everybody puts on a cap or a jersey, a Brian Wilson beard or even just a rally thong. I think this one has legs.”
There’s a silence that seems to indicate people are either giving it a fair bit of thought or I may have overplayed my hand. Besides the fact that the Giants are my team, I’m very enthusiastic about this choice because if it takes, we’re out of this meeting and I’m off the hook for presenting a party theme of my own.
Norm nods, takes some notes and says the idea has possibilities, using that tone of voice that actually means “never in a million years.” He’s a Chicago White Sox fan, so you can’t rule out the jealousy thing either.
Several other suggestions are made, but none seem to land with Norm, or his wife, Joni, who heads up our ad department. John Dennis, our chief operating officer and a guy who’s as smooth around the office as he is around the greens on the golf course, looks up from his notes and says, “Bill, what do you have?”
I pull out my wallet, give it a quick look and say, “About $23 and a VISA card that isn’t quite maxed out.”
An eternity passes. This is a tough room. With a not-so subtle-shake of his head, John says, “Do you have a suggestion for our party?”
It’s never a good idea to upset the guy who writes the checks. It’s even worse to admit you haven’t been paying attention. So I go for broke: “Why do we need a theme? How long have we been doing this? Are we not the only locally owned business publication? Is this not the best business event of the year? Why are we trying to muck it up with some sort of theme? This isn’t broken, and yet we seem hell bent on fixing it. I don’t get it.”
Now it’s Joni’s turn. “You don’t think people are maybe getting a little tired of the same party?”
Now it becomes clear that it wasn’t enough to suggest that what we have is just fine—I have to defend it. While I wasn’t wild about participating in this event planning experiment, I’m stubborn enough to feel I could try.
“Let me reframe your question, because I think we’re starting with the wrong assumption,” I begin. “Do I think people are getting weary of a classic evening? Let’s take that apart for a minute: The night has traditionally had a combination of several ingredients. To begin with, it’s the people who make it a great event. This is taking nothing away from the venues, wineries and caterers, but you have to start with people who have a passion for their business—so much so, that they’re the best at what they do.”
I looked around the room quickly to see if anybody was buying it. While nobody was heading for the door, nobody was on their feet chanting “Bizy, bizy, bizy!” either.
I plunged ahead. “Don’t forget that the awards aren’t about us cooking up winners in the name of selling ads. These are local businesses voting for other businesses. These are our peers taking the time to weigh in about who’s doing a good job. And while some excellent businesses have emerged over the years, every year we find new companies sharpening their game, stepping up and winning. So the mix is always fresh.”
Again, I paused to take a temperature in the room. People were listening; Lynn Long and Lori Rooney of our ad staff were nodding their heads; Jessica Hicks, our all-purpose administrative star, looked as if she was actually writing some of this down. I made mental note to sit with her and explain the difference between quality thought and meeting room BS.
I now had a faint hope that I might get away with it and get back to doing some actual writing. “Now let’s talk about the fact that we have delicious wines served in a relaxed setting, not a tasting room where you have to battle a busload of visitors from Iowa, bless their greenbacks. And then we have amazing food, everything from salads of organic, locally grown baby greens to grilled grass-fed beef sliders and oysters from our coast. Talk about an embarrassment of riches.”
It was time for the big finish, a little something for my friends in the design department, David Brawley and Anne Schenk. “I think there’s a danger of over-thinking the party. It’s one thing to look at a page in the magazine that’s put together perfectly, where the page pops, the eye follows the copy naturally, and it seems effortless—versus a party where we’re trying too hard to make people say, ‘Wow!’ It’s the difference between watching Andres Torres and Buster Posey hit. Torres is in constant motion and Posey is quiet. They can both get the job done, but Posey makes it look easy.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our director of sales, Fred Conner, trying to translate the Giant analogy for ad rep Wendy Tognetti. My editors, Julie Fadda and Alexandra Russell, were rolling their eyes and making gestures telling me to cut it off—or maybe they were flashing gang signs, which made no sense, since I wasn’t scratching on a turntable and rapping (which I do frequently as my alter-ego DJ Funkenstein).
As a matter of fact, if my idea to maintain the simple elegance of past years wasn’t adopted, my next move was to suggest a disco theme and insist Norm let me spin my custom remix of Tupac and the Bee Gees. You should have seen the way they filled the floor the last time I played Sunny Acres Retirement Oasis and Rehabilitation Facility. Wall-to-wall walkers shakin’ it to “Stayin’ Alive.”
We’ll never know how much you would have dug those sounds, though, since Norm stepped up and said that while we might consider a theme down the line, this year we would stay with our tried and true formula.
People began picking up their stuff and heading back to their desks. I shuffled past Norm and he said, sarcastically, “Nice job. You didn’t fool me for a minute. I was just tired of you yammering on about your Giants.”
I gave it right back to him: “Sarcasm really isn’t very flattering coming from a man of your advanced years.”
He glared at me. “Make your deadline, then pop off.”
That hurt a little, but not nearly as much as what came next. Roger the intern brushed past me and said, “Thanks for your support in there. Would it have killed you to be a pirate for just one night?”
Me and everybody else Roger. Get over it.
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz. He also pens the Only in Marin column. Feel free to let him know how much you enjoyed this piece. He’ll be the guy at the BEST OF event with the one-eyed parrot on his shoulder.
