I tried my best to post via the Crackberry from the stadium, but it was hard to stop being in the moment and start writing about it. It still is.
Friday morning. I’m back in the Limesicle Cafe. My night last night took on a truly cinematic quality. I hope it will become clear when I download the pictures (didn’t do it this morning–sorry–needed coffee too bad).
It was a journey, or a series of journeys. I was the stranger thrust into the group of three friends. I can’t write up the entire thing right now. But when I got back to John’s at 1:45(!), I wrote notes on the day. From most recent to the beginning. It was a rewind. Each thing was so clear and so solid in its moment, it was hard to remember things from the beginning of the day. The end was so intense, it required all the space my brain had for the day. So I had to retrace my steps backwards.
As I wrote last night, I sat next to a wonderful woman from Denver (but a New Yorker and Columbia Journalism School grad!) name Jeannine. It was one of those moments where you’re thrown into an experience and you get lucky. I could have been sitting next to Jim the Disgruntled Recycling Volunteer who had been sitting in my seat until the Sandy the Super Usher told him that these seats were not for volunteers and that he was supposed to be working. The seat was empty for nearly two hours until I came through the gate, walked up to Jeannine, and asked if the seat was taken. She welcomed me to our little spot, overlooking the field, press forty feet behind us (but a world of sound-proof glass away), like being on a ski lift for three+ hours with a stranger who’s going to see you laugh and cry and dance and scream. In other words, you’re not a stranger for long.
That’s why, when the speech was over and the fireworks done, I headed out with Jeannine to meet her friends Catherine and Macayla. I wasn’t ready for the night to end and I couldn’t be alone. We walked from the stadium back to downtown, on a shut down road that crossed over the interstate. Not a single car on I-25. There were thousands of people leaving Invesco, walking over this road, seeing the empty interstate. That’s when I began to feel like I was in a movie. That this was a shot of people leaving the site of a disaster. I flashed to the people on the highway after Katrina. (I’ve seen a documentary with footage of that scene twice in the last month, so it’s in my mind’s eye.)
We interrupt this post with a live report from your ace radio reporter:
Mike McDonald is on the radio here at the Limesicle! You don’t know me, but I’m your brother! Michael McDonald is taking it to the streets.
So, here’s what Jeannine and I had to say about Michael McDonald:
- He’s the Democrat’s answer to Kennny Rogers.
- I prayed the second I saw him that he wouldn’t sing “Ja Mo Be There” (or however the fuck you spell that title).
- Jeannine replied that it would be fine if he just changed the lyrics to “Obama be there, baby.”
- I think she’s right.
And now back to our regularly programmed blogging.
Oh, fuck that. That’s a perfect taste of what last night was like. Cinematic. Apocalyptic. Long. Funny. Random.Michael McDonald. I think he was a little eye candy for the Active Grannies.
Now Sly’s reminding me that I’m everyday people. I gotta head back to John’s. Go look at some art, check out Denver, the Aftermath. Then home to Austin and the fight for the future.
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