Press Talk: Of dancing and those goof-ups

When the dancing is over, a winner is chosen based on how much money landed under each name.

And that’s where Scott Campbell comes in. This guy is crazy good. Scott is the governmental and community affairs manager for Waste Connections, and it’s fair to say he is well-connected. Not only did he raise the most money, he raised more money than anybody who ever participated in this event: More than $60,000.

His routine began with a little “Godfather” music, and he was as smooth as whatever the heck he was pouring into his glass.

Congratulations, Scott!

So what about the rest of us? Well, we all were given an award for something. But let me break it down into two categories:

Best Dancers: Katie Atkins-Castillo (Life Pilates), Dave Henderson (Vancouver Police Department), Patti Westby (Westby & Associates), and Heidi Scarpelli (Vancouver fire marshal).

Best Concepts: Dan Wyatt (Kiggins Theatre) did this “Star Wars” thing that was out of this world! Pat Jollota (former city councilor and local historian) was Queen Elizabeth II and dragged a parachute behind her because — of course — she had just jumped out of a helicopter. Ingenious. 007 would have been proud.

I had a concept, as well, but I couldn’t pull it off. It had to do with life as an editor. I danced to people swearing at me (“Talk Dirty to Me”), forcing me to run (“Love Runs Out”), and finally someone saying something nice (“Happy.”) I had protesters on the stage (thanks, High Five Media), and my dance partner from Arthur Murray was great (thanks, Kaylyn Haynes).

But my dancing was pedestrian and my shtick at the end fell flat. I did get the Most Outrageous award, and I’m embracing that, baby!

It was truly a blast. I appreciate good causes — which this event was — and I made new friends. And the audience was engaged!

Spelling

Of course, it was back to that editing thing after dancing, and I quickly found myself dealing with life in the newspaper business.

We learned about a misspelled note at WSU Vancouver. Obviously, this was not a big-deal story, but it was a little out of the ordinary. Why? Let me explain.

An English writing class wasn’t meeting, so a note was posted saying the class was “cancaled.”

Whoops!

Now, some folks argued we make spelling errors all the time at The Columbian, so we don’t have any room to point this out. Fair enough.

But in the end, most newspapers have found that readers are interested in anomalies; things that are a bit unexpected. Something that deviates from the standard.

It’s the ol’ “dog bites man” isn’t news, but “man bites dog” is.

So this mistake in a college English class was difficult to ignore.

It happens to the best of us.

Back in 2003, my alma mater — the University of Florida — made this WSUV error look tiny.

Florida, of course, is known as the home of the Gators. When the football media guide came out that year, there was a huge photo of an alligator leading the team onto the field. Except it was a crocodile.

Whoops!

We all make mistakes. Especially me. Universities, your favorite sports team and our political friends have all been embarrassed.

We’ll never eliminate the mistakes. We can only — hopefully — learn from them.