Casket a Dead Giveaway
Restaurateur Paul Dobson professed himself utterly untroubled by the casket--and its occupant--that briefly rested just outside the door of his fashionable Broadway Circle watering hole early Saturday evening.
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Dobson. “I just thought it was someone who had to wait too long for his reservation.”
The erstwhile cadaver, actually a mannequin (clad in black tie, it clutched an artificial red rose and wore an “It Oughtta Be Ottilie” button in its lapel), symbolized the 11 former members of the Bachelor Club who this year fell prey to the siren song of matrimony.
True to custom, the club mourned fallen members Saturday at its 64th annual Burial Dance, held in the Georgia Room of the U.S. Grant Hotel and preceded by a solemn cocktail hour at Dobson’s.
The idea of the burial dance goes back well before such prominent former Bachelor Club members as Kim Fletcher, Gordon Luce, Philip Klauber and Togo Hazard ever gave a thought to the ties that bind. It is meant as a clever, if pointed, salute; but in truth, one must question to what degree the club opposes marriage, since a record 20% of the membership stood at the altar in 1987.
Dave Snyder, the club’s incoming president and burial dance chairman, arrived at Dobson’s well before the coffin. He said that fallen members are referred to as “The Dearly Departed,” and added, “So many fell this year, including three club legends. We’ll miss them.” (Snyder admitted that the tone of the evening is tongue-in-cheek, though, and is meant very much to honor the new brides. “They’ve done a lot to improve our lives,” he said.)
Seven of the 11 newly married members turned out for the event, and all of them, by club tradition, brought along their wives (interestingly enough, most wives and dates wore black to comply with the make-believe tone of the evening, for which the dress code dictated “black tie with tears.”)
Shortly after the group had assembled at Dobson’s, a group of six pallbearers (five club members and a fatigue-clad helper recruited off the street) solemnly crossed Broadway and marched to the restaurant, leaving the coffin outside while the bearers went in for drinks.
“This is a first for Dobson’s,” said head waiter Jesse Simon, who also predicted, quite correctly, that interesting traffic complications would arise when the group returned to the hotel.
After a brief intermission, the whole crowd came out to retrace their steps to the Grant, this time led by a trumpet and drum that played “Auld Lang Syne” and, more cheerfully, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” To say that the casket-led procession prompted extravagant gawking on the part of the public would be to put the situation gently.
At the hotel, the coffin and its inhabitant were deposited beneath a mannequin dressed as a bride, whose salient feature was the rolling pin she waved in a pronounced manner. And if the point still were lost upon anyone, headstones bearing the names of the departed were arranged outside the entrance to the room.
The seven fallen club members in attendance were Mike Fink, Glen Goodman, Matt Hervey, Chris Jenson, Biff Leonard and Brian Scanlon; Scanlon and his bride flew out from their new home in New Jersey to attend the event.
In addition to Snyder, the Bachelor Club board includes Jon Cavan, Jeff Platt, Rich Flannery, Mark Wolford, Mike Horung, Glen Englund, Eric Luna and Chris Rhoades.
Some 470 guests turned out at Sea World for Saturday’s presentation of “An Evening With . . . ,” the annual fund-raiser given by the UCSDMedical Center Auxiliary.
The yearly classic has presented such fascinating speakers as adventurers Jacques Cousteau and Sir Edmund Hillary. Cocktails in the Penguin Encounter--a thick glass wall separated the guests from the resident penguins, who surely would have liked to sample the skewered scallop hors d’oeuvres--preceded a formal, multicourse dinner in the Nautilus Pavilion.
A warm, clever performance by Sea World’s City Streets performers opened a dinner that began with Malayan-style pasta salad and continued with veal medallions, breast of duck and flan in chocolate sauce. After the meal, Kirk Peterson, UC San Diego Medical Center’s cardiology chief--whose new program for the study of electrophysiology will benefit from the evening’s $90,000 net proceeds-- addressed the crowd.
“We don’t need to go to Times Square to see America walking past us,” said Peterson to emphasize the full spectrum of the community served by the medical center. “We see every station of life daily in the wards at UCSD.”
Moynihan at Podium
There was, of course, a featured speaker. U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), a tall man with a head of blindingly white hair, held sway at the podium for quite some time, discussing poverty and AIDS.
Like all speakers, the senator knew to open his lecture with a bit of humor, which in his case consisted of the salutation, “Fellow Democrats.” The largely Republican crowd gave Moynihan the laugh he evidently anticipated and allowed him to get on with a speech that prompted one guest to comment that the ability to filibuster must come naturally to those elected to the Senate. Moynihan began speaking before some guests had been served dessert, and his words worked up a kind of rhythm with the chorus of tinkling sounds made by spoons clattering against plates.
The speeches concluded, the guests rose to dance to Biorhythm, the local big band whose ranks consist exclusively of physicians, including many associated with the UCSD center.
Susan Stone and Joanne Meredith co-chaired a committee that included auxiliary President Jean Johnson, Sally Ashburn, Edith Drcar, Ellen MacVean, Colette Royston, Penny West, Audrey Geisel, Carolyn MacLeod, Candice McCarty, Helen Boyden, Susan Garfin, Cynthia Hewett, Shannon Strybel, Shelley Pleet, Laura Norris and Connie Galluzzi.
It was announced that Washington satirist Mark Russell will be the featured speaker at the 1988 version of “An Evening With . . .”
Just think of Karen Cohn, Sheri Kelts, Jeanne Lawrence, Francie Mortenson and her mother-in-law, Veryl Mortenson Fredericksen, as a sextet that happens to be shy one member.
This jovial group recently banded together to co-produce the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s current production, “Six Women With Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want To Know.” As recompense for their contributions, their names are posted on the marquee of Horton Plaza’s Lyceum Theatre and, to celebrate the situation, the sextet attended the theater en masse the other evening after first repairing to Dobson’s for an early dinner.
According to Mortenson, the producers entered into their roles with their eyes wide shut. “None of us really knows the content of the play, except that it’s supposed to be a little raunchy and very funny,” she said. That both suppositions turned out to be correct (the play broadly satirizes the contents of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids, and the fantasies possibly entertained by some readers) fueled the congratulations the producers lavished upon the performers at a post-performance cast party given in the Lyceum’s lower lobby.
Mortenson, a board member of the foundation that controls the Lyceum, said that the idea of recruiting a half-dozen women producers for “Six Women” began when Rep producing director Sam Woodhouse mentioned that he was looking for a producer for the show. Given the production’s title, the idea of having six producers seemed more appropriate to Mortenson, who with Fredericksen persuaded Cohn, Kelts and Lawrence to join the sextet. Rather obviously, a sixth member was not found, but in the tabloid-scented atmosphere of the endeavor, it really didn’t matter.
Fredericksen said that “Six Women” was her second theatrical experience; the first came along in the mid-1970s when the pilot episode for the television detective drama, “Harry O,” was filmed at her La Jolla home. The other women said they had brushes with the stage when in school.
Joining the producers for dinner and the show were Woodhouse, Don Cohn, Ben Kelts, Aage Fredericksen, Chris Mortenson and the Rep’s Karen Goyette.
