Monday, February 06, 2006

Legends Celebrity Sporting Clays Shoot

First, I gotta give a big ole THANK YOU to Wayne LaPierre and NRA Sports for reallying pulling together the Legends Celebrith Sporting Clays event in Vegas Saturday. They did a spectacular job in what amounts to herding cats.

I'm hosting The Outdoor Channel special presentation of the event, along with my pal Olympic medalist Kim Rhode. The event features John Elway, Dan Marino, baseball legend Roger Clemens, members of the "Miracle on Ice" US Olympic hockey team, actors Joe Mantegna, Brad Johnson, Richard — Shaft — Roundtree, etc. This was by far and away the most fun I've ever had at a celebrity shoot. I really enjoy talking to Joe Mantegna...we met (at the old Charlton Heston Celebrity Shoot, natch) right after he did that Rat Pack movie playing Dena Martin. He told me that he had based his Dino character on the book Dino, by my old pal and running buddy Nick Tosches, so we ended up with a lot of common ground. I got to sing a FABULOUS rendition of the opening of the Shaft theme to Richard Roundtree, trade barbs with Elway, who was a wonderfully nice guy, do a really nice interview with Roger Clemens, etc.

Kim did a lot of shotgun instructing, as well as play "toss the football" with Dan Marino. She also did some really nice interviews with the Miracle hockey guys...scarly, being around that many people with those gold medals!

We were worried about the event, because it was crammed into too little time, and the Desert Lakes Country Club sporting clays course, while beautiful, is spread all over the planet. But NRA Sports stepped in and everything ran like a clock.

BTW, Kimmy has decided to make another run at the Olympics, this time in skeet — her sport, women's double trap, was eliminated so the Powers-That-Be at the Olympics could add dog frisbie and aerobic gardening. Of her first 100 clays in the new sport, she broke 99. Of course, she only broke 98 of the next 100! Of course, the current Olympic world record is held by Russian Svetlana Demina in the 1999 Games in Japan...99/100. Good luck, Kim! You'll be seeing more of her on SHOOTING GALLERY.

Yeah yeah yeah...I'll get to the gossip later!

No comments: