*GUEST ENTRY*: Ed takes the family to see Obama, Ft. Collins, CO

About a year ago I had started running out of ideas for this blog. As I think many of you have noticed, this small spot in the Internet universe has evolved a bit from “New This Weekend” to pretty much just “This Weekend”. I think most of you have adjusted to the transition well without too many epileptic seizures and worry rashes. During my dry spell last year, I had asked for some guest writers to do a post for me. Beth was up to the challenge and although Ed also said he would do it, it would be months and months before I got his essay. In fact, it was just a mere 10 minutes ago that I got the following post. With the election coming up next week I figured now would be as good as time as any to share it (especially seeing that it appears that my San Francisco “The Cash City” post will never get written).

Views expressed in the following post do not reflect the opinions of the author of this here blog. Except they sort of do, but we’re going to gloss over that for now.

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In which Ed takes his family to see Barack Obama at a rally in Fort Collins, Colorado


Yesterday (Sunday Oct 26), Democratic candidate for president Barack Obama spoke at two rallies in the Denver area - one in front of the capitol building in Denver (reports say that well over 100,000 people showed up for the morning rally in Denver!), and another one in Fort Collins on the CSU campus (nearly 50,000 people!). My family and I decided to go to Fort Collins for the 3:30pm speech. We knew there'd be a lot of people, since the University claimed to expect over 20,000 prior to the event. So we planned to head up there early!

We did not plan well enough! Confusion over the time caused some problems (anybody else notice their VCR's 'fell back' an hour Saturday night?), and a sudden and quite heavy bloody nose brought our expedition to a sudden detour (Natalie is prone to them, but this one was shocking -- double handful of bloody tissues, anyone?). Sometimes I think my lovely wife single-handedly keeps the tissue and moisturizer industries in business.


Fort Collins is about an hour North of our home in Thornton, and then another twenty minutes West to our initial destination. After a quick stop in Erie to pick up our mothers and speeding through lunch followed by the uber-nosebleed, Katie, Natalie, Laura, mom and I finally arrived at the South end of the bus route serving the event. Front Range Community College, where buses were queued up to take passengers to CSU campus. The parking lot at FRCC was surprisingly not remotely full. We began to think that we were in for a break since OBVIOUSLY the city of Fort Collins wasn't overwhelmed with visitors!


Not so. We rode our bus North on College Ave. into the heart of campus (see A on my map of the East half of campus for where we got off the bus). We walked through the tunnel under College Ave as directed by our bus driver. This turned out to be a time-waster, as we ended up doubling back to College Ave. to find the end of the line (see B on map)... Quite the line, too! We were about 4 abreast, and the line ran as far as I could see down Pitkin Street. Random people would pass by from time to time grumbling about how far they'd walked to find the end of the line. One grumpy gal declared loudly "Give up, there's no way you're getting in!" Others said things like "They're cutting it off at 20,000 people and they were already to 15,000 an hour ago!" and "It's already 3:15, and you have thousands of people ahead of you. Go home." and "How long have we been in line? Seems like 3 days." Things were moving slowly because, at the entrance to The Oval, security was frisking and/or searching every person.



Yes, it looked pretty grim. It was nearly 3:30 and the line stretched out ahead of us interminably. We thought about giving up, but held fast! The decision point came a few minutes later (See C on map). We came to a fork, at which point we could see the line we'd been following, on the other side of a gap 30 yards ahead of us; and we could see all the people immediately in front of us heading off quickly to the right - toward The Oval where the event was scheduled to begin right then. Why did the line split? Where were these people going? A small knot of campaign volunteers were standing there telling us that we were to go thataway - toward The Oval. "I don't know what's going on, but go that way." Very reassuring words! Perhaps we were being led back to the bus stop?


I'm kind of a law-and-order guy. I don't take cuts. I had a short-term hard time deciding whether to follow the crowd or get back into the same line we'd been in for so long. We decided as a group to go right, and see what happened. Heck, we were already late and our line hadn't been moving very quickly. Why not?! So we hustled and followed the new route directly into the heart of campus.

Things got a little ugly when our short cut brought us into contact with The Line we'd gotten out of. We'd bypassed a significant chunk of The Line and were re-merging with The Line (see D on map). None of us realized at this point that all order had broken down at the gates to The Oval... ;-) So, a woman was standing apart from The Line, hollering at all of us (several hundred of whom had already merged into The Line) "Who are you people!? You can't cut in here!" She was all serious and indignant. I felt sorry for her, on one level, because haven't we all felt that emotion? But part of me also laughed, inside, at the absurdity of her standing there trying to hold off hundreds more line-crashers. Brave, foolish person. Tsk tsk.


Undaunted, our sizeable force invaded The Line (which was at this point about 15 people abreast). But The Line was fracturing anyway. Packs of people broke off and headed to The Oval via other routes. It was very chaotic and lots of people pushing and shoving. I held tight to Katie's hand - she's 5 years old - and I was concerned she might get scared in the crush of people. But she was actually very brave the whole time. We kept getting separated from the moms, Natalie had katie some of the time, I did some of the time. But happily, it never devolved into fighting or people-stomping. It was as peaceful as a mob could be!


At this point, we spotted our first McCain/Palin supporters. They were wandering around with those ironic "Country First" signs that always give me a giggle. Poor suckers. Our mob managed to spurt out a few yells and jeers which came across kind of nasty considering the vast outnumbering going on. Later I spotted some folks wielding pink 'Obama the communist' signs and sporting red hammer & sickle motif signs. Little packs of pot-stirrers in a sea of excited, amped up Obama supporters. You wouldn't catch me doing something similar!




As The Line headed North on West Drive, picking up speed, it started to feel eerily like the scene in Lord of the Rings where the orcs start pouring through the walls of Helm's Deep. A handful of campaign volunteers stood behind trash bins and barking "Don't run! Walk please!" (I somehow resisted the urge to smite them with my orcish sword.) Obama signs of the sort that get waved during speeches were scattered in the street, their paper-tube handles crushed by dirty shoe-prints. I saw a clipboard with volunteer registration forms laying among litter. Everywhere the signs of a crowd-control struggle gone wrong. (It appears, actually, that once Obama started his speech and The Oval was near full, security simply decided to let people in without searching them.)



We could hear the crowd cheering and snippets of Obama's speech. It sounds so powerful in person, compared to the flat, over-rehearsed sound you get when watching him speak on TV. Live, it was fiery, urgent, and more inspiring. Soon, encouraged by the amplified voice and amplified crowd, we were approaching the line of easy-ups that served as the security checkpoint (see E on map). The white canopies stood unoccupied by any official presence now, while literally thousands of people streamed through them. The Oval itself was sectioned off into multiple 'pens'. We all poured into a pen on the SouthWest sixth of The Oval.



At the opposite end of the great open space, filled with giant oaks, was a rank of bleachers surmounted by a giant "CHANGE" banner (see F on map). Beneath and in front of the banner was a small stage with a lone podium. At the podium stood Barack, in his black jacket and white shirt (no tie - the FOX people like to line up this look in comparison to the way Ahmedinijad tends to dress). The crowd was massive. Since I'm just over six feet tall, I was able to see over the top of many people's heads and actually spot Obama across the crowds. My wife and our moms could not see him at all. Katie put her hands to her ears, because the noise of the crowd and the blaring loudspeakers assaulted her, but she was excited to be there and I put her on my shoulders. I don't think she actually saw the candidate, though. She's too unfamiliar with crowds to know how to orient in one. You have to know what to look for at that kind of distance. Where are the people out there looking? Where are the lights pointed? Where are the cameras pointed? What positioning of the stage would position Obama properly for photos?



Fifteen minutes went by so quickly; Katie was glad when the crowd dispersed and she could run around. People all around us were happy and not grumpy about the crowding. Those of us with cameras showed our photos around, which was nice since so many people in our part of The Oval hadn't been able to see Obama over the heads of the crowd. We spotted about a dozen SWAT officers, well armed and in black body armor. On the way back to the bus, we saw another half-dozen McCain supporters protesting Obama. No catcalls this time, as far as I could see. We left inspired and optimistic.



It's pretty cool to live in a Battleground State. Everyone should give it a try some time!

Quiz Master! - Costa Mesa, CA

THE SCENE: Patio at the Harp Inn, approximately 4 Saturdays ago.

SPECIAL NOTE: Exact conversation may vary. I have a bad memory and I failed to bring along my personal stenographer that night.

MOE: (sigh) I wish John Joe would have a pub quiz here. Or that the Shamrock holds one again soon. I’ve really been in the mood for a pub quiz.

KEVIN: The Harp is having a pub quiz?

MOE: NO, I said I WISH the Harp was having a pub quiz.

DAVE F: Then have a pub quiz.

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

MOE: What do you mean, HAVE a pub quiz? Like hold one ourselves?

KEVIN: The Shamrock is having another pub quiz?

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

ANDY: Sure, why not? Just ask John Joe.

MOE: ...to hold a pub quiz?

ANDY: Yep.

KEVIN: What time is the pub quiz at the Shamrock?

MOE: The Shamrock isn’t having a pub quiz, I just said I WISH they were.

DAVE F: A pub quiz here would be a good idea. Hold it on some Sunday when it’s dead.

MOE: OK, let’s have a pub quiz!

ANDY: Who wants to be Quiz Master?

(Moe shoots her hand in the air before the question is even out. She does this because she believes that Quiz Master is a sought after title and many will be clamoring to take from her if she is not swift in her acceptance to hold it.)

ANDY: You want to be Quiz Master? You sure?

MOE: Absolutely!

DAVE F.: It’s a lot of work…

MOE: That’s fine.

(John Joe suddenly appears out on the patio. Moe calls him over.)

MOE: Hey John Joe, can we have a pub quiz here?

JOHN JOE: Sure.

(Without another word John Joe walks away)

MOE: Maybe I should have been more specific.

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

And that, my friends, is how I suckered myself into hosting my first pub quiz this past Sunday afternoon.

To steal directly from Wikipedia so that I don’t have to go about describing something ineffectively: A pub quiz is a quiz held in a pub (oh, good one Wikipedia). It is largely a British phenomenon. (damn those Brits with their brilliant ideas to get people to drink more!) Most pub quizzes depend on answers being written in response to questions which may themselves be written or announced by a quizmaster (in da hoooouse!). It is up to the quizzers to form teams, which are generally based on tables. The team members decide on a team name, which must be written on all papers handed in. (Maybe I would have been better at describing this). People often have to pay to participate – ranging from £1 to £5 per person (current currency conversion rates mark this as $12.35 to $800 billion American). There may be between one and more than half a dozen rounds of questions, totaling anything from 10 to upwards of 80 questions. Prizes are awarded to the highest scoring team, and possibly runners-up as well.

My own personal experience with pub quizzes is minimal. I attended one at the Shamrock last year and I was at one with Beth at some dodgy bar in New Berlin, but I could have sworn I’ve been to at least one more. Wait, I think it might be coming back to me….it’s fuzzy but it’s there…2000 or 2001, Huntington Beach, Fitzgerald’s….I was there with either Andrea or Finky…probably Andrea…we lost…badly. Sorry that I slipped into a reminisce. Now I have to listen to “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band as punishment for making you go through that.

“Hurry! Don’t be late
I can hardly wait!
I said to myself when we’re old
We’ll go dancing in the dark
Walking through the park and remiiiiiiiiniscing!”

God, what a horrible easy listening 70’s tune. And yes, I do have a perfectly good explanation on why I have it in my iTunes catalog. And no, I will not be revealing that explanation to you.

So yes! The pub quiz. I want to share this with anyone who may be tempted to shoot up their hand as if on fire at the prospect of owning the title Quiz Master. Being the Quiz Master is a lot of work. You may think to yourself, “Self, this will be EASY. How hard is it really, to collect together 50 odd questions? Easy peasy Japanesey. Like, a day tops is all it’s going to take. Self, you are totally all over this.”

These fine lads are enjoying their pints and crisps while thinking of ways to taunt the Quiz Master.

What you fail to realize when your hand shoots up as if reaching for falling money at the glory of Quiz Master is that you will be on a stage with a microphone reading 40-50 odd questions to a bunch of people who, while claiming to be your friend, will not hesitate to heckle you the very moment you screw something up. These questions, because they are coming out of your mouth, are YOUR questions. If the question is too easy, your now drunken heckling “friends” will roll their eyes and odd drunks who are not even playing will call out the answer ruining that question for everybody. If your question is too hard you will get a collective groan and “whatevers!” and “well, I’m out on this one!”…after they (your now VERY drunken heckling friends) force you to read the question not once but three times to make sure that they were correct in assuming that this particular question was the most lamest asinine question ever known to man.

Oh, and lastly…try to choose questions that don’t contain words that are hard to pronounce or give way to Freudian slips. You will be nervous enough without saying loudly in a microphone to a bunch of your drunken heckling friends “Bram Stroker’s Dracula” (Bram Stoker) or “Vinson Massive” (Vinson Massif) or “Jaffa” (pronounced Yafa or Hafa, not Jaffa like Jaffa cakes). That’s right, I’m here making the mistakes so you don’t have to. What can I say? I’m a giver.

Needless to say that once I got into formulating my questions, I started getting nervous. I knew I would have a mix of Americans and Europeans so, for example, sports questions, I couldn’t have them all NFL or soccer related. And after talking to people who would either say, “Please don’t make the questions too hard” or “You don’t want me to play, I’m excellent at trivia” I started to stress whether the questions I had were decent enough to keep both sides of the coin contented enough to have fun. I honestly spent a good two weeks putting together 50 questions and lost a bit of sleep at night those two weeks because I couldn’t stop thinking about the questions. I’m usually not this obsessive (I’m inherently too lazy to be obsessive on a regular basis) but I wanted it to be good enough that John Joe would consider holding a pub quiz again.

FAMOUS QUIZ MASTERS OF OUR TIME:

Marty "I read 'em, you weep" Johanson

Jacob "Spit on me again and I'll break your falange" Cook

Peter "The Lush" Hoover Jr.

Peter "The Lush" Hoover Sr.

Amiya Pahare (no, really)

By the time this Sunday hit and the quiz was two hours away my stomach was in knots. I went to the Harp to set up and seeing as that only took 5 minutes, I spent the rest of the time walking from the patio to the inside then back to the patio to either smoke my way through a pack of cigarettes, drink a pints upon pints of water, or use the bathroom (because of said water). I was basically pacing.

"Ha Ha Ha! Wait until we fuck with the Quiz Master this time! HA HA HA HA!"

The quiz started at 4 o clock (ish). 20 people showed up for the quiz forming a total of 5 teams. John Joe had gotten the hated microphone out for me but I was still a bit shaky to get up on stage. I pleaded with Kevin to go up there and read out the quiz rules for me. I needed to see how the crowd responded. If they threw peanut shells at him (and the Harp doesn’t even sell peanuts) then I knew I couldn’t do it. But the crowd, still sober, was fine. They heckled a bit but it was in good fun. So I got up there. The first round was a bit hard…my voice was trembling a bit, I mispronounced a couple words and I was in a constant fight with the bastard microphone…but over all it was OK. By the final 4th round I was pretty comfortable on stage. I still had trouble having fun with the hecklers though…I’m just not quick witted enough to throw something back in time (I tend just to make a face back which I think is a lot worse than just ignoring the heckle. I could be wrong).

Written: The Quiz Master is a big stupid head.

At the end the Tea Baggers were victorious (they choose the name not me)(and damn am I going to get a bunch of unwanted internet traffic with that sitting there) by getting 25 out of 40 of my American\European Hard\Easy questions correct and Bravo 2-0 getting 17 for 2nd place. People in general seemed to have a good time and I had not one but three people come up to me immediately after asking when the next quiz was. And get this…John Joe bought me a beer! John Joe! The owner! Bought ME a BEER! To make it even better, he wants me to come in this Tuesday to talk about scheduling more quizzes.

"We won the quiz so we won't beat up the Quiz Master on the way to her car."

After the quiz I sat outside on the patio talking to my participants\friends\drunken hecklers. They gave me a lot of great suggestions for the next quiz. I’m looking forward to it, I really am.

Thank you to everyone who showed up. Thank you for the beers and the suggestions. And mostly, thanks for having fun or at least saying you did.

**Sorry that once again I have no pictorial evidence of this event. I didn’t forget my camera this time…it was actually sitting on the coffee table begging to be brought along. Due to my habit of blushing on a moment’s notice, I couldn’t bear to have internet evidence of me on a stage with a bastard microphone beet red from nervousness. Maybe next time, maybe not. Let’s just say that you’ll probably get the Little River Band story about the same time as you get a picture of me on a stage with a bastard microphone.

Obama Campaign Party - Huntington Beach, CA

Oh cripes*! Last week I’m telling you all about my job (which I don’t like talking about on the blog), and here I am this week talking about politics (which I don’t like talking about on the blog). Seeing as my new thing this weekend was an Obama campaign party I don’t know how I can really avoid it.

*CRIPES: A purely Wisconsin term that is used in lieu of being blasphemous. I really don’t use it as often as I should.

I don’t like discussing politics because it’s pretty pointless. It’s a bit like discussing food:

“Hi, I like broccoli but I don’t like cauliflower.”

“How can you possibly LIKE broccoli! It’s green! Cauliflower is so much better.”

“I just don’t like cauliflower. But broccoli tastes pretty good, especially with some butter and basil.”

“Well, you’re stupid.”

“I, uh, yeah…OooooooK.”

I guess what I’m saying is, politicians are exactly like broccoli and cauliflower: Vegetables that kids don’t like to eat. And I’m voting for broccoli this year. (with butter and a dash of basil). This is actually the 2nd time in my life that I’ll be headed to the polls. The first time was 4 years ago. Before then, I couldn’t be assed. But then 2003 happened, and 2003 was really bad. Before 2003 when someone gave me crap for not voting and pulled the “well then you can’t complain” line, I’d say to them, “I’m not complaining. I don’t care. Until something happens to me in my own backyard I’ll let the people who are educated about politics vote for me.” While incredibly dim, the philosophy worked for me. Then…2003. I don’t know if I will ever not vote again.

Andrea was one of those people who used to give me hard time about not voting. Andrea is an incredibly intelligent, well informed, highly educated person. You’d think with those credentials she’d be a pain in the ass, but she’s surprisingly easy going. She’s also very liberal so it wasn’t with much shock to get her invite to the Obama campaign party via Facebook** a few weeks back. I emailed back pretty swiftly that I would be attending but that I didn’t think Kevin would be interested. Surrounded by a room full of liberals, as it was sure to be, Kevin might have broken out into hives. He has sensitive skin you know.

**Always wanting to build up my collection of friends, if you’re on Facebook, send me an email to the account right there  and I’ll send you a friend invite. HA! Build up my collection of friends. Like I’m storing you all in a curio cabinet in the garage. That would just be creepy. It’s a filing cabinet so I don’t have to look at your puppy dog eyes pleading with me to let you out every time I go in there to get my bike.


So yes! The party. I honestly didn’t know what to expect but it turned out a lot better than I had thought. I was thinking there would be a bunch of people talking candidates and initiatives and debates and propositions and a bunch of other stuff that I really don’t know that much about, but it wasn’t like that. Honestly, the most political conversation I got into was how to sneak an Obama\Biden bumper sticker on Kevin’s car without him knowing it (Andrea’s idea by the way). The party was at Jimmy and Siobhain’s beautiful house in Huntington Beach. Everyone pretty much hung out around the pool, drinking beer and eating the food prepared by the caterers (which was mostly food on a stick…you can’t go wrong with food on a stick). Oh, the pool…great pool. Not so great on my hair. It’s the humidity you know. I was afro-city in less than 15 minutes. Of course I didn’t realize I was afro-city until I went into the bathroom. And this, of course, was just after I made the comment to Andrea’s mother, “I don’t want Oliver to touch my hair, I just spent an hour doing it.” After the bathroom trip, “Go ahead Oliver, touch away.” By this time Oliver had lost interest in touching my hair but wanted to simultaneously cut off my head while shooting me with a gun. Ah, kids.

"I will close my eyes for 10 seconds. If you are still taking my picture when I open them, I will cut off your head, shoot you dead, and cut off that afro-city do! Heeee Heeeee"


Speaking of which and this story is going to be a ‘had to be there’ tale (but dammit, I’m writing it down here so I don’t forget it), Jim and Siobhain had ordered these cupcakes that had the faces of Obama and Biden on them. The kids at the party, intermittently between trying to cut off heads and start a pillow fights, would sit on the kitchen stools just drooling over these cupcakes. I don’t have to tell you that they couldn’t care less if a smiling bear or Obama’s toenail was depicted on the frosting, they just wanted the damn sugar. After hours of waiting, the caterers were given the go ahead to bring out the cupcakes. The kids swarmed the poor man in the bow tie. Four of the kids, all under the age of five, had just grabbed their sweets when Siobhain came out with her camera. “Line up! I want to get a picture!” These poor kids are looking at Siobhain with death in their eyes; two of them had their little pink tongues reaching out to just get that first taste of frosting. “Line up!” she says again. So the kids line up. Each have their cupcakes less than 2 inches from their mouths. “Say OBAMA!” she says. Each of these little kids, each grabbing on to their cupcake like it was the last food on earth (one with bright red curls) look up to Siobhain and say with all the malice and grumble that a child can muster “ooobama.” *CLICK!* As soon as the flash went off, 4 Obama heads depicted in frosting were gone. I laughed so hard the people standing next to me asked me if I was alright.

Oliver will vote for anyone that has cupcakes.

And that was the party in a nutshell. I talked to a lot of nice people. I bought a $20 Obama t-shirt for the cause (which when I got home and put it on, Kevin claimed burnt his skin if it touched him) (no hugs for you buddy). I laughed at children. I had a good time.

Go Broccoli!