At some point after moving away from Anchorage, I had decided I’d like to go see a show at The Fly-by-Night Club. Deep in the heart of Spenard, the club is a local landmark, a bar and lounge that features year-round entertainment by the famed Mr. Whitekeys and his Spamtones in shows like “The Whale-Fat Follies” and “Springtime in Spenard.” I never really knew what it was, and never knew anyone who had gone, but the further I got from life in Alaska, the more I thought it was something I should see, an authentically Alaskan experience whose existence I had taken for granted growing up here. Plus, everyone needs a good laugh at the expense of the local newspaper, local politicians, and crummy weather, especially when it’s your locale. I think we had tried to arrange it a few years before, but we finally got around to it this time around. Little did I realize that by the end of the evening, we would eat an order of Spamadillas as an appetizer, and and I would be crowned “King of the Minor Celebrities” by Mr. Whitekeys himself. But first things first…

The show itself was all I had expected, and more. Mr. Whitekeys, aided by a former Miss Anchorage as well as a bassist, drummer, and another actor, lampooned Alaskan politics and culture (as well as ridiculous holiday catalogs) for two hours. Most of the jokes were set to music, like “Viva Anchortown,” sung by “Elvis,” to the tune of “Viva Las Vegas,” accompanied by a slide show of old clip art, photos of dreary Anchorage winters, and doctored images, usually featuring the heads of politicians on the bodies of people doing stupid things. The slide show feature was an added bonus that helped reinforce the lyrics, and certainly made things easier to understand for those of us a little removed from life here, or complete strangers to the world of Alaskan humor. Here, Mr. Whitekeys lampoons the million-dollar diamond-encrusted Mr. Potato Head from the Neiman-Marcus Holiday Catalog.

But it was more than just jokes; as soon as we’d finished a song about how the governor tried to buy a LearJet with Alaska’s Homeland Security budget, we were on to a very nice slide show of beautiful Alaskan wildlife and nature images, accompanied by Mr. Whitekeys’ rendition of the “William Tell Overture” on two harmonicas. Weird. Every once in awhile, I’d hear a joke about Anchorage and forget where we were and be excited that someone was telling a joke about my home city; then they’d mention Spenard, and Muldoon, and I’d remember that all the jokes were about us.

Mr. Whitekeys’ obsession with Spam plays a large role in the show; one of the first songs featured slides of images submitted by people all over the world holding Spam cans in interesting places (shades of Stew Leonard’s and iPods Around the World. Imagine my surprise when up on the screen pops an image of Brent, on a football field wearing a sousaphone with a SPAM cover on the bell. I wonder if he knows he’s got a role in this year’s show.



At the intermission, Mr. Whitekeys asked audience members to submit their claims to “minor celebrity” status, after giving us a few examples from his book, Elvis Presley’s Pharmacist Was My Sunday School Teacher. “The more obscure the better,” he said, and so I submitted by entry on the card provided: “I was thrown into Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford’s swimming pool by half a dozen second graders.” After the intermission, the best submissions were read aloud, including ones from someone whose relative had dated F. Scott Fitzgerald and someone who rented an apartment below Elvis. Mine wasn’t chosen; oh well. The next thing I knew, my name was being called (and pronounced properly) by Mr. Whitekeys to come up on stage as one of the three finalists in the race to see who would be “King or Queen of the Minor Celebrities.” I was up against an actress from New York (sat behind Barbara Bush at Yale for a semester) and a nurse at a local hospital (gave Little Richard morphine after a car accident).



Mr. Whitekeys read each of our entries and talked to us about our experiences, and then asked the audience to vote for the winner by applauding. My story didn’t get much of a reaction when it was read aloud, but I think I told a better story during the interview segment, and I came out the winner.



I did a little kick-step to “You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You (and even then you might still be nobody)” with Mr. Whitekeys and Former Miss Anchorage, and was crowned (with a Burger King crown, what else) and given my fabulous prizes, a Smirnoff Ice t-shirt, a used Anchorage state house campaign sign, and an inflatable Sam Adams promotional float plane. What a night!