Pasco 2000 celebration will come in 3 acts

By BARBARA FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 15, 2000

Get out your red marker and put a big 'X" over May 13. That's the all-day Celebration Pasco 2000, a new event being put together by the tireless Kathryn Starkey, the Pasco County Parks and Recreation Department, hot air balloonists Phil and Melanie Sekora, and a passel of volunteers. It's a day you won't want to miss.

Plan to get up early. What you might call Act 1 starts at sunrise, when you can watch at least 12 giant passenger balloons, some as tall as eight-story buildings, take off from the Starkey Ranch for a flight across trees, lakes, shopping centers and all other things below. It's a sight that can be topped only by Act 3, around 8:30 p.m., when the balloons are brought back to the ranch, re-inflated and filled with light for the Hot Air Balloon Glow.

In between is Act 2 for all us lily-livered landlubbers who couldn't be forced to ride in one of those balloons at the end of a hot poker. The Starkey Ranch will be alive with activities and educational events for all of us.

Start with hot coffee and doughnuts during the sunrise liftoff, followed by a big pancake breakfast accompanied by stories about Pasco history by Ernie Holzhauer. For the brave at heart, there will be tethered balloon rides going up about 60 or 70 feet, but hooked to a cable on the ground (more my style) for $10 apiece. The day also includes kids games, music by local rock and country bands, a demonstration of radio-controlled model airplanes, a kite decorating and flying contest, Cowplop Bingo (Need I explain?), cowchip slingshot contest, a barbecue dinner and then the Balloon Glow.

Winners of the meadow muffin contests will get gold-plated cowchips on a plaque, an award that can be displayed with pride between college diplomas, kids' photos and Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis club awards in offices and homes across the area.

Businesses are underwriting the day, so all the profits will go to the Pasco Boys and Girls Clubs, Heritage Park Foundation and Keep Pasco Beautiful.

Entry charge is $2 a carload.

'We hope this will become a two-day event and become a major celebration for Pasco County every year," Mrs. Starkey said.

You read it here first: The big holiday show for the year 2001 (as in 19 months from now) at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre is going to be the super-marvelous Mame, with (who else?) Dee Etta Rowe in the title role.

It's the story of the eccentric and much-married Mame Dennis, whose motto is, 'Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death." Mame is determined that neither she nor her young charge, nephew Patrick, will lose an ounce.

I've seen the Rosalind Russell movie upon which the musical is based, Auntie Mame, a gazillion times and loved it more each time. But the movie version of the musical, with its woefully miscast Lucille Ball as Mame, is abominable. Puh-leeeze don't judge the show by that movie. The stage show can be adorable, filled with Jerry Herman's great songs, including We Need a Little Christmas, Bosom Buddies, If He Walked Into My Life and a host of others. All it takes is the right cast, and Ms. Rowe is a terrific start.

It's that Christmas number that convinced the Show Palace owners to schedule the musical Nov. 16 through Dec. 26, 2001. (The musical Wonderful Life is the holiday show this year.)

It's hard to believe that the Show Palace has been open for 42 months.

The first 21 months of random comics, singers, impersonators and nostalgia acts were bumpy for owners Nick and Sal Sessa, to say the least.

The last 21 months have been spectacular. It took a merger between the Sessas' Palace and Jimmy Ferraro's Angel 'garden cafe" Theatre and a string of Ferraro-directed Broadway musicals to get the place moving.

In fact, the Palace just rang up the numbers and realized that the 1999-2000 season attendance will be double the 1998-99 season, Ferraro said. And things just seem to be getting better.

'People are coming in wanting to buy tickets for the summer season -- not just this summer, the year 2001 summer," Ferraro said.

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