Alan Peppard

At Saturday night's Gridiron Club dinner and yuckfest in Washington, D.C. — the last for George W. Bush as president — fellow Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison gave the evening's Republican address and explained to the prez what things are like back in their home state.

Associated Press

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas

"At the zoo in Washington, the cage has the name of the animal, then the name in Latin," the senator explained. "In a Texas zoo, we have the name of the animal and the recipe." Hi-yo!

For the success of the Gridiron show, let's give a special shout-out to our colleague Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News, the first representative of a Texas paper to serve as president of the 123-year-old Gridiron Club. It has a long tradition of satirizing the political elite.

For the real yucks, go to YouTube to see the bootleg video of George W. singing the evening's farewell song with his backup group, the Busharoos. Some of the snappier lyrics to his tune, "Brown, Brown Grass of Home," went "Down the lane I look and here comes Scooter/Finally free of the prosecutor" as well as "When it's Condi/And Dick, my old compadre/Talking to me about some oil-rich Saudi/But soon, I'll touch the brown, brown grass of home."

Last week at a dinner in his honor, billionaire T. Boone Pickens approached the dais with one arm wrapped in a cast. "All I'm going to say about this," he said to the crowd at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, "is that's the last time I carry my wife out of the shower."

In fact, Mr. Pickens broke his wrist in an inglorious fall at home. But even with his cast and the snow and ice, he wasn't going to miss the Park Cities Quail Unlimited banquet.

When Mr. Pickens is interested in a cause, he often writes a big check. But for this event he got other people to come out in a snowstorm and write their own big checks.

Mr. Pickens received the group's Lifetime Sportsman Award. To help raise money for the evening's beneficiary, the Rolling Plains Research Ranch, he offered a special hunting trip for six couples at his 68,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch in the Texas Panhandle.

"Boone brought his A game and let us ride his enormous coattails," says Bubba Wood with Park Cities Quail Unlimited.

When the trip to his ranch was sold at the live auction for $140,000, Mr. Pickens promptly offered a second trip, which also sold for $140,000.

Because of the evening, Park Cities Quail Unlimited will donate $550,000 to Rolling Plains to work on repopulating Texas quail.

Mr. Pickens started the Mesa Vista Ranch in 1971 and began burying PVC pipe — now more than 50 miles of it — to create watering holes every 1,000 feet for quail and other wildlife.

"Remember, this was in the '70s when most everyone's idea of quail conservation was praying for rain in May, June and July," Mr. Wood said in his introduction.

Nice work by Dallas-raised musician Lisa Loeb, who got Steve Martin to appear on her new CD for kids, Camp Lisa, which will be released May 27. Ms. Loeb recently created the Camp Lisa Foundation, a nonprofit to help send underprivileged kids to summer camp.

Multi-Grammy winner Natalie Cole will be the featured entertainment at the May 3 YWCA Centennial Gala at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. The Y is celebrating its 100th year of service in Dallas, and the evening is themed "100 Women, 100 Years."