Sellin' It

Two Fridays ago, I sold people.

Apparently this is okay in the name of philanthropy. At least that's what the good folks of the Vienna Volunteer Fire Department (VVFD) told me and my co-emcee/auctioneer, Stacey.

That's right...we auctioned off firefighters to raise money for the VVFD.

We even dressed in the official colors of the VVFD. Which hopefully diverted
their attention from the fact that we were gavel-happy and would roast them
mercilessly in them name of sadism raising money.   

Stacey and I go way back to the time we worked for a three-person advertising agency in DC and delivered expensive bottles of wine to clients as holiday gifts. A time during which I brightly said to one client upon presenting him with the bottle, "this is the Cadillac of wines" before remembering he was the General Manager of a Lexus dealership.

With that kind of success under our belts, we were ready to tackle human trafficking. (Note to self: practice the way things sound in head before saying out loud...).

Highlights from our banter included:

• References to Sharknado, Randy Mantooth from Emergency! and jokes about the French
• A bit about one firefighter "not being able to be here tonight because he is donating a kidney to an orphan -- and by that, we mean he is attending his future brother-in-law's stag party."
• Mentioning a fun fact that the Deputy Chief provided about himself, noting that he "enjoys workouts using strange items like sand bags, sledge hammers and kettle bells." (We said, "That doesn't seem so weird. It's the ball gags that are making people talk.")
• Talking about one firefighter attending University of Pittsburgh where she will pursue her dream of always losing football games to West Virginia becoming an emergency pediatric physician
• Pronouncing Tobias Funke's name incorrectly and immediately getting corrected by every.single.person.in.the.audience
• Me (referring to one firefighter up for auction who had a shift that night and could not be there in person):  "You know, it's hard to get people excited about bidding when they cannot see the merch." Stacey: "Did you just refer to people as "merch?"

Jeff went for $250. Which of course made us open bidding for Tina at $251.
She ended up going for $300. Girls rule, boys drool. 

Stacey had the most successful line of the night: (Note: we had noticed earlier that there were about 6 bottles of hand sanitizer on the buffet table. Firefighters = germaphobes.) So, when Jeff Cockey (pictured above) swarthily made his way up to the stage, stopping along the way to wink and flirt with every woman in the venue, Stacey remarked:

"Remember...there is plenty of hand sanitizer available."

I had the least successful line of the night: 

"Jeff joined the VVFD because when he lived in LA he found a man face down in his gym's hot tub and there was nothing he could to until the medic arrived. From that point on, he wanted to make sure that there was always something he could do in that type of situation...He also wanted to make sure the gym bleached the hot tub." 

Too soon?

We were hoping that our shtick would bring some comparisons to the comedy stylings of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey....possibly the name Amy Schumer would be bandied about. Instead? We got a "Hoda and Kathie Lee" and "those two old guy Muppets up on the balcony."

I'm actually understanding this comparison. 

Hundreds of millions of dollars (or something like that -- I'm not great with math) were raised for the VVFD. And really -- all Sharknado and ball gag references aside, isn't that the point?

Settin' it on fire, 

Brutalism