Trademarks

Huh ... I see the last post has little trademark thingys all over it. Won't ever cut-and-paste off a Word file again. Let us leave it online as a cautionary tale.

BTW, NPR went well, considering my steadily approaching delirium. Show is available here. When I get tired, I start talking and singing to myself, which may be one small step toward feeling what Dennis Hopper once felt.

(Just took a walk past the pavilion -- heard a protest, can't actually see the protesters in their cage from the media compound, but found myself singing "More than a Feeling" by Boston. The incoherence is advancing ...)

Music's a big part of convention presentation. I've heard "Johnny B. Goode" three zillion times in tribute to Kerry/Edwards, saw Peter, Paul & Mary two days ago, and the Black Eyed Peas shouted out after Edwards's speech last night. Tough for the GOP to top that next month.

My personal highlight? John Mellencamp, acoustic, "Small Town" last night. I've always considered it the Flyover National Anthem (Note to coastal audience: If you don't quite get it, no biggie. It's a Heartland thing. You wouldn't understand.), and the performance was the one moment the entire convention when I just dropped the objectivity, just turned on the tape recorder and sung along.

That was a nice experience. Conventions are like any other case of advanced task overload -- it's easy to get so caught up in details that you miss the moments. But when thousands of flags are waving and people are united behind a system of government they believe in, and when you realize that it's all a part of a process that's proven its value over the test of time, and when you think about how no matter what happens in November, it will happen again in four years, and when you think of how many nations can't conceive of that certainty, it's important to pull back for a moment of perspective.

But that's not very cynical, is it? Sorry -- for a moment there I forgot I was blogging.