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Retired Marine Col. John Saputo, a decorated veteran, wags a sharp wit under his tough guy exterior — though it sometimes gets lost in running a $90 million beer distribution business.
But Saputo, president of Lakewood Ranch-based Gold Coast Eagle Distributing, got to turn on his humor recently in Las Vegas, where he upstaged none other than “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno. Saputo and some top Gold Coast executives joined Leno onstage at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Conference Center during an Anheuser-Busch sales and marketing meeting. The Gold Coast crew was in town for the meeting, but they didn't know it would win the company's prestigious Ambassador of Excellence award.
Leno, after he presented the award to Gold Coast, asked Saputo if he was Italian. Saputo's reply: “Yes. I'm Sicilian. That's the best kind. We are the rednecks of Italy.”
The line, which Saputo tells Coffee Talk was unprepared, brought big laughs from the crowd. Then Leno, while he patted Saputo on the back, asked the executive if being Sicilian meant he was carrying a gun.
Saputo, again with an unprepared one-liner, told Leno only “thugs from New York carry guns on a shoulder holster.” Saputo got even more laughs from the crowd when he said he was packing heat somewhere else.
Leno, says Saputo, then jokingly said he does the humor and pointed Saputo to sit back down. “He thought he would use me as the butt of jokes,” Saputo quips, “but I ended up using him.”
Once the laughs settled down, Saputo got serious. He says the Ambassador of Excellence award, given to 15 distributors out of 675 and based on factors that include sales, distribution and logistics, was a “high point” of his career.
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