I wish I could have posted this this morning, but because Monday is Labor Day, I faced an early cartoon deadline and had to deal with that first. (We at Slowpoke, Inc. deeply respect Labor Day, of course.) From my jottings while at Invesco Field Mile High Product Placement Stadium:
I arrived not long before Sheryl Crow sang "A Change Will Do Us Good," a variation on her hit "A Change Will Do You Good." Speaking of song lyrics, I actually heard Lenny Kravitz’s "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" twice in Pepsi Center. Maybe an invitation to Hillary supporters?
Bill Richardson had a nice line: "John McCain may be paying hundreds for his shoes, but America will be paying for his flipflops."
I sat next to a reporter for a German-language Swiss weekly, Woz Die Wochenzeitung. Here’s something he wrote, if you can read German.
By the way, the French TV correspondent I talked to yesterday said the BBC sent, like, 92 people to Denver. I have no way of confirming that, but I would not be surprised.
One thing you couldn’t observe watching TV was the stadium-wide foot stomping that shook the whole place on several occasions.
Al Gore got a long standing ovation.
I loved the Long Island accent of the pet store owner from Florida echoing throughout the stadium: "We can’t affawd faw maw yeahs!"
An hour or so before Obama came on, the text of his speech was released to the press, as was the case with many major speakers at the convention. I didn’t read it, though. I waited to hear it delivered.
As you can imagine, the anticipation kept building and building, and you might say there was some electricity in the air by the time he walked onstage. For me the most spine-tingly moment was when he talked about MLK. But there were so many great memebusting lines — about how Repubs say to pull yourself up by your bootstraps even if you don’t have any boots, and how the ownership society means you’re on your own, and that "it’s time for them to own their failure." Smackdowns don’t get any better than that.