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I really didn’t want to do this, but I now see no other way. I doubt a running commentary on the Democratic National Convention will reach the heights of my perennial Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest or Miss USA pageant commentaries, but we can always hope. Unfortunately, as I’m apt to say, hope is not a strategy.

For starters, I’d like to say that the podium they’ve set up in Pepsi Center is working better than I’d expected. When I checked out some photos - which I see have been replaced and thus made unlinkable - before the convention actually began, I was taken aback by the strength of the convention stage’s resemblance to a game show. Headlines flashed through my visual cortex: “Who Wants to be a Nominee?” and “Delegate or No Delegate?” Luckily, the technicolor signage behind the speaker is too large to be seen in its full, farcical glory.

As far as I could tell, my coverage options were PBS or MSNBC. I went with the latter, if only in the hopes that, after five or six hours of commentary, Keith Olbermann might forget himself and start delivering SportsCenter highlights. MSNBC’s inability to secure audio from the podium mic before Nancy Pelosi started talking didn’t engender a whole lot of confidence. When considered in conjunction with the previous discussion between Olbermann and Chris Matthews concerning how silly a name has to be to be “too silly” for a presidential campaign, it certainly fostered my hopes that Stuart Scott might make a late-night entrance with some highlight footage of an Argentinian jai lai match…or some such nonsense.

Nancy Pelosi - Wow. I know this is about party unity, but I really didn’t expect the first full sentence I heard to be praise of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Having seen Speaker Pelosi on Meet the Press yesterday morning, I’m amazed at how deliberate her speech is. Someone must piped subliminal alocution lessons into her boudoir while she slept last night. Also, she “called the convention to order” with two double-taps of the gavel, which comports to no gaveling conventions of which I am aware. Usually, it’s two to rise and one to sit; maybe she’s just that emphatic about getting asses in the air. Were that the case, would three double-taps have started the wave? The possibilities are staggering. Yada, yada, yada…Is the “John McCain is wrong” chant going to echo through Denver all week? As an aficianado of the single entendre, I can certainly appreciate this phrase’s complete lack of subtlety. Where are the teleprompters? It’s clear that Pelosi is swivelling her head through three distinct sight lines, but I can’t see whether the script is changing pace with her recital. Such is NOT the manner of transparent politics.

Jimmy Carter - Jimmy Carter’s speaking at this convention? Someone should have briefed me. Hold on…he marched across the stage with his wife and proceeded (to the relief of many, I’m sure) to abstain from speechifying. Quoth Mad Men: “I shall be both dog and pony.”

Fast-Forward - Golly gee, there are a lot of breaks. If it keeps up like this, the O/U on the percentage of convention-goers yet to get blackout drunk by the time of Michelle Obama’s speech may reach a supermajority. My money’s on the over. Why is Pat Buchanan part of the team covering the Democratic convention? That’s a bit like having Theo Epstein give commentary on Yankees’ spring training games. Oh, and whoever the woman is that’s anchoring this segment, each of her sleeves appears to have its own cape. If you are a superhero, madame, you need to work on your “mild-mannered reporter” disguise. The way Matthews and Olbermann respond to each other’s jokes leads one to believe their partnership is more similar to JFK and LBJ than it is to Ax and Smash.

This is not the greatest Kennedy in the world; this is just a Tribute - “Handsome woman” is an underused phrase these days, but it works with Caroline Kennedy. David Axelrod has to be happy with the prevalence of repetition at this convention, though I doubt he had nothing to do with this localized rhetorical phenomenon. The Ted Kennedy tribute digressed after a strong start. He really is the Babe Ruth of U.S. Senators: each achieved historical success in his chosen field despite being overweight and enjoying, among other things, booze, cigars, and loose women. Okay, the tribute is pretty good, for a sentimental puff piece. The problem is that, when I saw Caroline Kennedy walk to the podium, I thought “I want to be like Jackie Onassis,” and the Rage Against the Machine lyrics just kept coming. It was only a few minutes before someone in the tribute used the word “testify,” which triggered an entirely different Rage Against the Machine album. Really, they should just cut the unintentional references and find a way for Rage to play for the duration of the convention. What group of Democrats couldn’t rally behind rap-metal lyrics like “fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy,” “What better place than here? What better time than now?,” “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” and “yellow ribbon instead of a swastika”?

Ted Kennedy - I had previously assumed that Ted Kennedy had taken news of his brain tumor as a reason to squeeze some extra life into his days. Yet, the man at the podium shows no visible signs of intoxication of venereal disease. As a matter of fact, he delivers a hell of a speech. You can see it at the convention website linked above.

Interlude - In the midst of my fast-forwarding, I would like to note that we have now completed 3 of the 7 hours of coverage. Howard Dean got a good haircut.

Craig Robinson - Apparently Michelle Obama’s brother also attended Princeton and was recently hired as head coach of the Oregon State men’s basketball team. I learned this from the internet, your primary reference for answering the question “Who’s this schmuck?” I see his CV includes no credential regarding levity. The thing about analyzing Barack’s character through his basketball game was the perfect opening for a friendly jab, but Robinson refused to take it. Humbug.

Michelle Obama - Both Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Obama are stately, handsome women. Looking at their mouths, one wonders how much orthodontia would be included in any universal health care solution. Having heard tell of a speech that might last longer than an episode of Two and a Half Men, and with many fewer applause lines, I’m getting comfortable for this one. Mrs. Obama is an engaging speaker, but she has one crucial flaw inasmuch as she keeps shifting her weight, gesticulating with her entire body even though she’s got to be three feet taller than Nancy Pelosi, for whom the microphone was originally situated. I’m guessing it’s a bad sign that, when Michelle Obama delivers the line about her daughters growing up to have children of their own, my reflexive thought is an abstraction to the effect of “Wow, everything will definitely suck by then.” Admittedly, the thing about dwarfing the microphone is my only complaint about the speech itself. The aftermath, during which Barack publicly teleconferenced with his family via the magical LCD wall, was precious in the most pejorative sense possible. Granted, his demeanor and charisma made it abundantly clear why he’s the candidate, but between the kids with the microphone and the monitor in the wall, it was a bit like an episode of Kids Say the Darnedest Things scripted by Gene Roddenberry.

Matthews & Olbermann - The look on Keith Olbermann’s face when he realizes that Chris Matthews is about to clarify this statement, made with regard to the Swiss Family Obama: “You know, I didn’t think this would happen [pause] in my lifetime” is priceless. Chris Matthews is unboundedly earnest, and he means to say this as a recognition of social progress in America, but what follows, while Olbermann is monosyllabically sputtering his anxious attempt to respond is: “I didn’t think we’d have a black family up there.” It’s good to see a guy apt to come off like a dick appear genuinely affected, but everyone around him knows that, after something like 7 hours on the air, Chris Matthews has chosen his words poorly. Cut to Tom Brokaw, who successfully sterilizes the issue.

A Note - It seems that the speakers have finished by the end of the fourth hour of “prime time” coverage. I have no idea why this programming was scheduled to last another three hours, unless MSNBC plans to follow the delegates through last call at the bars.

I really wanted to provide a standard set of bullet points this week. I wanted to direct you to the campy charm of Lolo Jones‘ website, Run, Lolo, Run. I wanted to tell Brunson that I’m currently working to eliminate the Flash intro and move this site to being entirely split between WordPress and Joomla. I wanted to explain how Captivity could be both a mechanically sound filmic indictment of societal trends toward voyeuristic sadism and an utterly atrocious movie. I wanted to communicate a whole slew of undirected thoughts, but I’ve been captivated by the dissent within the Democratic party.

One can only assume that the people at PUMA sought to imply some relation to the cougar, in its recent vernacular form, when selecting their acronym. Perhaps the PUMAs see cougar subculture as some new manifestation of feminism. Personally, I thought feminism had more to do with fighting things, and I’ve never known anyone to argue with the idea of women having more sex - particularly if that sex is with men. More to the point, PUMA’s formal interpretation is “People United Means Action,” which I’m lent to point out is grammatically incorrect; colloquially, it’s “Party Unity My Ass!”

If you haven’t already guessed, PUMA is a splinter PAC (registered as a 527, just like the Swift Boaters) of Democratic voters. They’re calling for the heads of Howard Dean and Donna Brazille, among others, pledging fealty to Hillary Clinton (HRC) as “leader of the Democratic Party” - a position she’s never sought, to my knowledge - and generally spreading bitterness and spite throughout the world. These are people actively trying to make HRC the Ralph Nader of 2008.

My complaint about PUMA is similar to my critique of most second-wave feminisim: they do a bang-up job of expressing their feelings of disenfranchisement - the validity of which I don’t contest at this juncture - without providing any coherent plan for global domination. With respect to second-wave feminism, I’ll admit that those women were battling an ongoing social condition. By contrast, the HRC presidential campaign has come and gone. Even a successful coup were staged at the convention next week, the resulting campaign would have just enough time and resources to limp into a loss to McCain, which no one wants.

Even before PUMA drew my attention, I’d been thinking about HRC this week. “Why?” you ask? Nastya Liukin reminded me of the junior senator from NY. The young gymnast isn’t much for smiling. In fact, with the exception of medal ceremonies and the rare occasions on which she’d pleased her father, Miss Liukin projects the affect of someone who firmly believes she is struggling against the entirety of the known world. While her perception to that effect may have been accurate - and exacerbated by NBC’s blatant eagerness to valorize Shawn Johnson - it was by no means endearing. For similarly valid reasons, HRC projected a similar affect during the primaries, and it had a similar effect on her audience. One does not become a good teammate or leader by sheer force of determination.

On a more logistical level, The Atlantic ran an article in its September 2008 issue that outlined the internal struggles of the most recent Clinton presidential campaign. Even I, an admitted Obamaniac for some time, can see some lack of journalistic objectivity in this article. Nonetheless, the facts it reports appear to be both accurate and documented, and they certainly indicate that the campaign, which advertised HRC as a candidate ready to take executive office, suffered from a lack of central control. This irony seems to be lost on the PUMAs, who worship HRC without requiring her to directly acknowledge their existence.

Then again, perhaps I’m allowing myself to get rankled over nothing. When describing PUMA’s plans for Denver, their website notes “We will have a 46″ flat-screen TV set up for everyone to watch Hillary’s historic address on the 88th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage.” If that’s supposed to be impressive, then we ought to just hold a convention in my living room, where there are two TVs, a 57″ and a 60″. Quoth Matt Johnson: “That’s like inviting a bunch of people over to my place to watch; we’ll have nachos and Keystone Light.” A related note from TMQ: “The NFL switched its opener to a 7pm start time so the game does not conflict with John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that night. This suggests the presidency is more important than football, an idea I am not entirely comfortable with.”

• Anxiety - I was just reading a relatively random IMDB entry, and it made me realize that I’ll be 43 in less time than has passed since The Wonder Years and Life Goes On [Editor's Note: Admittedly, I never actually watched this show by choice. This will sound abominable, but my capacity for empathizing with characters who are defined by their learning disabilities is severely circumscribed. Okay, when I say it like that, it sounds more pompous than heartless; that's a near-optimal outcome.] were canceled. I think I need a paper bag; I’m about to hyperventilate.
  It’s not that 43 is terribly old, in the abstract, or that seventh grade feels like last Tuesday. Up to this point, however, I’ve been living under the assumption that my mid-life crisis years were more distant than the release of Under the Bridge, and that heuristic no longer stands. I need to get a career and and a wife and start making a whole lot of disappointing compromises, and I need to do it right now, if I’m going to try to use those life choices as an excuse for the whole slew of rash, foolish changes I plan to make in the vicinity of 2030. Oh, crap - where did I put that paper bag?

• Review - None of the facts surrounding Big Trouble led me to believe it would be good. Tim Allen plays a prominent role. It’s adapted from a novel by Dave Barry (which wouldn’t be bad, but I was only aware of Barry as a humorist, not a novelist). Running time is listed at 85 minutes, which is 4 minutes shorter than Office Space, the shortest excellent movie known to man. Unfortunately, the trailer piqued my interest.
  A catalog of inane absurdities, Big Trouble is basically a goyish Woody Allen movie: lots of nonsense and half-assed neurosis sans witty dialogue. Given my frustration with films like Babel, Crash, and Traffic that attempt to tie together seemingly unrelated incidents for some epic effect, I should give Big Trouble credit for making no such attempt. The descent into Seinfeldian frivolity, however, is equally distasteful. Boo this movie. Boo.

• OlympiXXX - I think it was Thursday night that I woke to hear one of my roommates use the phrase “hot-assed Nastya Liukin.” Disregarding the question of whether this statement is better rebutted on grounds of taste or decency, it’s a solid lead-in to one of my favorite little-reported stories of any Olympics: hedonism in the Olympic village.
  Perhaps this notion has never crossed your mind. If not, you might take a moment to consider that the athletes are segregated from the general populace. For the most part, they are astoundingly well-built individuals still enjoying their youth. They’re in a high-stress situation and surrounded, likely for one of the few times in their lives, by people of like minds and experiences. Once one’s event has been completed, he or she has whatever time remains before the closing ceremonies to distract from disappointment or celebrate success. Motivations notwithstanding, the potential for fornicatory international incidents is unfathomable.
  If you Google “Olympic village hedonism,” you’ll get articles like this about the amenities available to the athletes in Beijing. If, however, you Google “Olympic village orgy,” you’ll meet with a quite narrow selection of legitimately interesting articles such as this, which, though written four years ago, offers an anecdotal history of Olympians’ penchant for Bacchanalia. Supporting evidence might be found in this article, which notes the 100,000 condoms the Chinese government has provided for use within the Olympic village (roughly 6/person or 12/pairing of Olympians). That’s only 40% of the 250,000 condoms distributed throughout Beijing for the games.
  I understand that Olympic coverage is a family affair, but, for all the unnecessary time spent broadcasting Michael Phelps’ family, someone could at least acknowledge the fact that the Olympic village is the U.N.’s answer to Freaknik.

• Amendments - In an earlier post, I referred to China as “totalitarian,” which is incorrect. “Authoritarian” is a more apt description.
  Also, I may have implied a suspicion that the U.S. Olympic swimming team uses performance-enhancing drugs. Although I remain suspicious, this article from NPR covers a few reasons why the Water Parallelepiped (clearly not a cube) likely holds the world’s fastest pool. This Slate article addresses what it calls “Olympic inflation.”

• Influence - How do you measure America’s cultural influence on the rest of the world? During the medal ceremony for women’s all-around gymanstics, some asshole in the front row leaned over to wave a Chinese flag behind the medal stand while the Star-Spangled Banner was playing. Yes, even the Chinese can be “ugly Americans” - and on their home turf, no less. Now I just need to see some Frenchmen wearing patriotic jumpsuits.

• Gymnastics - Other notes on the women’s all-around:
  • Between events, while discussing the addition of a heretofore unseen twist to Shawn Johnson’s floor routine, Bela Karolyi shook his fist, shouting past Bob Costas to the distant Johnson, “Go, girlfriend!” Someone else must have seen this.
  • Was anyone else distracted by the unnervingly long fingers and feet on a few of the young Olympians? It’s as if their bodies are pleading to be allowed to finish growing.

• Commercials - Since there are more hours of Olympic coverage than there are hours in a day, it tends to get left playing while I do other things (like writing this post). Because I’m not actively watching the idiot box, I don’t always have the wherewithal to avoid commercials, and I continually find myself aggravated by both the existence and content of said advertisements. Who, for instance, watches The Biggest Loser? What possible rationale could exist for subjecting humanity to a second season of Lipstick Jungle? Where I can bet on the O/U for Knight Rider? These are the kind of questions that keep me distracted enough to breathe.

• Danger - Spotters stand downfield of javelin throwers to immediately mark their distances. Such would not be my risk-taking behavior of choice.

• Commercialism? - Time|Life is selling this boxed set of Vietnam DVDs. The TV commercial leaves me apoplectic. Yes, this collection holds unique educational value, but the way they count down battles like the track listing of a Greatest Hits CD is appalling.