As far as the sins of public relations go, is there any worse than misspelling the title of the play that you're being paid to plug?
"The Barn Players, Kansas City's award winning community theatre, will present a special six-performance engagement of the Off-Broadway stage hit "THE VIGINA MONOLOGUES," writes Pat "[sic]" Paton of Pat Paton Public Relations, located in Mission, Kansas.
In the press
release, sent out last Sunday, Paton goes on to misspell "vagina" three
more times. Oh, Pat. Oh.
We called Paton to find out how ruthlessly he'd been teased over the errors. "I'm telling you -- that's not the only mistake," he laughed. "If I had hair, I'd be bald." Paton, who says he's been in the PR biz for 50 years, adds that his other mistakes were the fault of the theater, which provided him with the names of the cast, some of which were spelled wrong. As for "vigina," the typo eluded his computer's spell-check function, he says.
We told Paton we'd hoped that the mistakes were actually his clever attempt to sneak the clinical term for lady-parts through spam filters. That wasn't the case, Paton admitted. He doesn't even have a website. "I try to stay off the Internet as much as possible," he says. "I try to give the publicity to my clients, not to me."
Because we are cruel to be kind, we'll still plug the Barn Players' show, which runs July 23 through August 1. For tickets ($15) and show times, call 913-432-9100 or go to www.thebarnplayers.org.
