While some of the agents I spoke to following ASTA's Monday general
session felt that the elaborate entertainment segment left too
little time to deal with substantive issues (more about that next
week), I would be remiss if I failed to describe the spectacle.
What amounted to a glossy cultural overview of Alsace began with
two French actors playing an American
couple who've invited a few thousand of their closest friends
to a backyard barbecue. Armed with some hokey patter and hilarious
Southern accents, the pair gamely tried to warm up the crowd. Snake
eyes.
What followed was a barrage of Alsatian dancers, a children's
choir dressed as candle-carrying angels (two of them were
hoisted into the air, which was how I knew they were supposed to be
angels), a grown man dressed in a silver-spandex suit who was flown
around the auditorium while wielding a silver propeller and
throwing handfuls of silver confetti onto the heads of unsuspecting
travel agents, and a symphony orchestra whose selections were
accompanied by huge working fountains for a Vegas-style "dancing
waters" effect.
It was silly and wonderful and vastly entertaining. For some
reason, though, after all that big-bucks merrymaking, your
colleagues still wanted to discuss those darn commission cuts. Go
figure.