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Neal Pollack

Wednesday, Jul 28, 2004 9:14 PM UTC

Blog, blog, blog

I've got my laptop and I'm staying just over the state line, close enough to smell the democratic process! I saw Janeane Garofalo today and she's shorter than me! OK, time for bed!

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Blog, blog, blog

Greetings From BAHS-TON
Boston. City of Light. The Big Easy. Hog Butcher to the World. At last, then, it’s come to this. I suppose you could say, technically, that I’m not in Boston. Or in Massachusetts, for that matter. The Democratic National Committee, which, I want to interject, has been nothing but accommodating toward my fellow bloggers and me, couldn’t get me a hotel room closer than Connecticut. But I’m staying right on the state line, close enough to smell the Democratic process, and my credentials allow me to cross into the Granite State whenever I want. So what are my thoughts on the convention thus far? Pretty minimal. My laminates instruct that I’m only supposed to watch the first 15 minutes of every televised hour on MSNBC. But I can say that I’m very impressed by Barack Obama, the senatorial candidate from Illinois. For many years now, I’ve been saying to myself that the Democrats need a strong black leader who isn’t really black. Obama strikes me as our Colin Powell, without the military record or the history of lying to the United Nations. Hang on. I’m getting an Instant Message from a friend of mine blogging live from the convention floor. Max Cleland just wheeled by! Incredible. [10:52 a.m. ET, July 26, 2004]

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Wonky About Wonkette
For months, I’ve been looking at the illustration of Wonkette on the header of her Web site, and I’ve found her very attractive. Many times, I’ve written Wonkette an e-mail asking her to link to something I’d written about something else I’d written, but I’ve always deleted them before sending. Then today, I saw Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette herself, on MTV. Definitely cute. I’d date her. But she looks nothing like her illustration. Also, I’ve been very impressed by the hilarious work that “The Daily Show” has been doing from the convention floor. Do we live in an age so framed by artifice that fake newscasters reporting real news are more real than the real newscasters reporting fake news, thereby becoming the story and eclipsing the real news? I don’t know. Ask Frank Rich. [3:25 a.m. ET, July 27, 2004]

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I’m Famous, I’m Famous!
Today a reporter from an ABC affiliate in Buffalo, who was assigned to do a story on bloggers covering the convention, interviewed me in my hotel room. I told her that blogging is revolutionizing the way ordinary people watch politics on television. Here’s a partial transcript.

REPORTER: So there’s something called blogging?

NP: Yes.

REPORTER: And it’s on the Internet?

NP: That’s correct.

REPORTER: So why do you like doing it?

NP: Blogging allows me to be opinionated, unlike the mainstream media, which never lets me express my opinions at all because it doesn’t employ me and probably doesn’t want to.

After the interview, I begged her to stay, because I was very lonely and she had a hot pair of gams. But she insisted that she had to leave immediately, so instead I took the bus to the state line, hopped over it, and then hopped back again. State lines are amazing. [10:08 a.m. ET, July 27, 2004]

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My Big Break
I was taking a shower, which the DNC had generously allotted to me, when my audio e-mail signal began to go berserk. Apparently, an editor from Reuters ate a bad oyster during the hot-ticket Russ Feingold Beantown Blues Cruise in Boston Harbor, and died! This is very, very exciting. I’m going to have access to the convention center from 8:45 to 9 p.m., after which time I have to leave the state immediately. No problem. But I do have to get to Boston. Hmm. How to steal a car and not get caught? [1:37 p.m. ET, July 27, 2004]

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Hello, Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea!
Some impressions from the press room: Janeane Garofalo is shorter than I expected, but also taller, and she drinks orange juice. NPR reporters spend a lot of time looking very seriously at their computer screens, typing, typing. Those are all the celebrities I saw. People, please stop criticizing my convention coverage. I’m doing the best I can, given my inexperience, lack of sources, and complete misunderstanding of how the political process works. After security removed me from the hall, I got invited to a party thrown by the Oklahoma delegation, but they disinvited me just because I happened to mention that I think political conventions are “a great place to score some cooze.” Meanwhile, why isn’t Michael Moore getting more attention? [8:58 p.m. ET, July 27, 2004]

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Well, Time for Bed
I was feeling very horny after the Ron Reagan speech tonight, so I decided to order a prostitute from room service. But the hotel denied my request. Apparently, the DNC is only allowing bloggers to pay for hookers on Sunday, three days after the convention ends. This is an unfortunate development, because I doubt they’ll have a lot left in the tank by then. Nonetheless, I must plod on. There are two nights to go and much coverage of John Kerry’s lifetime of strength and service to analyze. As Wolf Blitzer said Monday on CNN Live, “old-fashioned journalism is what we practice. But I say four years from now, who knows what kind of blogs are going to be out there? We’ll be watching and learning from all of this.”

How true that is. [1:17 a.m. ET, July 28, 2004]

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Neal Pollack is the author of the literary satire "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature," among other works of fiction and nonfiction. His latest book, a historical novel called "Jewball," was published in October.

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