Jason Alexander as Donny Clay, motivational speaker, at lunch today: OMG! I could not even begin to describe his act, but suffice to say there were several minutes-long stretches where I was laughing so hard tears came to my eyes. My stomach is still sore. He was beyond hilarious, and he customized his schtick to a T for PCMA, from the lyrics of his opening number to picking on Seattle and PCMA officials in ways that were unbearably funny. Really. If he doesn't pick up at least 100 gigs out of this, I'd be amazed, though it's not for every group, that's for sure (a tad raunchy in parts. Don't get me started about the body suit bit...)
Robert Kennedy Jr. was the closing speaker, and he was, IMHO, brilliant in his dissection of where we're going wrong environmentally speaking. I can imagine some would absolutely hate him because of his political leanings, though he was careful to say at the beginning that it wasn't an indictment of Republicans, just of the current Administration's environmental record, that he would be equally critical of a Democrat with the same record, and that he was bipartisan in his support for those who are on the environment's side. I've seen him speak at least once before, with basically the same message, but I still got a tear in my eye when he talked about the spiritual/natural connection we have to our planet.
Anyway, he did have two new coinages I hadn't heard before: Dittoheads (as in, "Rush Limbaugh and his talk radio dittoheads") and biostitutes (those who say global warming has no basis in reality). He got a standing ovation, so I guess at least the crowd that remained was receptive to his message. It was, I thought, a bit of a risky move to have such a political flashpoint as a closing speaker, but it seemed to work for this group, time, and place.