"Billionaires Can Be Hams" by Michael Kelly, Omaha World-Herald
One by one, three local billionaires entered the theater Friday afternoon to rehearse comedy. Hey, rich guys can be hams, too.
Like most of us, they like making people laugh.
Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, Walter Scott of Kiewit and Joe Ricketts of Ameritrade became the stars of the weekend's 43rd Omaha Press Club Show. It drew sellout crowds of more than 900 each night Friday and Saturday at the Rose Blumkin Performing Arts Center.
Before practicing, Scott joked: "When do we negotiate the residuals?"
The trio performed a spoof of TV's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Regis Philbin, host of the show on ABC, provided a videotaped introduction that was played for the Omaha audiences. But because these "contestants" have little interest in mere millions, Regis reintroduced it as, "Who Wants to Be a Jillionaire."
The video of Regis surprised and delighted the audiences. They were doubly surprised when Buffett needed a "lifeline," and it turned out to be Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the richest person in the world.
On the video, Gates held a magazine, "Bridge Losers Monthly," with a picture of his Omaha pal on the cover: "Warren Buffett, man of the year."
With comedian Pat Hazell onstage asking the questions, the three Omaha billionaires made it through the rehearsal with ease. Their later performance became - for some of us connected with the Press Club Show for years - the most memorable in the show's history.
The annual event, which raises money for journalism scholarships, pokes fun at political figures right and left - and in the middle, too. Anyone in the public eye is fair game.
Bill Kelly of Nebraska Public Television, the club's 1999 president and the show's chief comic, aptly wrote in the program that those of us in the working press take our country's freedoms very seriously.
"It's important to remember," he noted, "that this silly spectacle, performed in some other countries, would land us in jail or result in our death. No joke."
That said, the jokes and the parodies poured forth. The cast opened with a cabaret-style takeoff of Ricky Martin's hit "Livin' La Vida Loca." Our version: "Omaha Is So Loco."
As emcee, I got to deliver a lot of barbs and quips, such as:
Union Pacific had begun to turn things around financially by having coal delivered by FedEx.
Gasoline prices are so high that Buffett and Scott are carpooling.
If elected to Congress, former Husker Coach Tom Osborne will push for skyboxes in the House chamber.
Vice at a motel west of downtown had gotten out of hand, with sex, drugs and scandal: "Like Regency, but with lower property values."
Promoters of the Interstate 80 arch near Kearney, Neb., plan an amusement park, "Worlds of Dumb."
This was the most energetic Press Club Show I can recall. It included a high-voltage swing-dance performance by the Central Dance Theater, and a comic magic act by "Lorenzo and Lorraine."
Sen. Bob Kerrey sang a funny song he wrote, and former Gov. Ben Nelson made a cameo appearance.
The Douglas County Board, with women in the majority, was parodied in Shania Twain style: "Man, I Deal Like a Woman." After appearing in a Buda-Duda encounter with Omaha Beef Coach Sandy Buda, County Commissioner Clare Duda - a guy - was needled in a Johnny Cash impersonation, "A Boy Named Clare."
Omaha's ranking as "10th fattest city in the nation" was spoofed in a takeoff of the "Too Fat Polka." (My neighbors are all big and round/And fat as they can be./But not too fat for me./I'm twice as fat, you see.)
The show was titled "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Arena," a reference to the proposed $281 million convention center and arena. The finale, with musical parodies from "Phantom of the Opera," featured Howard Swain Jr. as the phantom of the arena and Chris Christen Nelson as the goddess Arena.
Swain, programming manager for Cox Communications, was the show's director. Nelson, special projects editor for The World-Herald, was the show's executive producer - among other things, pulling together participants in the "Jillionaire" skit.
The Press Club Show is always a lot of laughs. With the billionaires, this year it was right on the money.
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