Quick convention update

Hey everyone. I won't be posting photos till later in the evening when I get back to my laptop, but today has been a bit mellower than yesterday. Still a lot of celebrity sitings, just a bit less harried than yesterday.

I spent the day at the convention center itself. Bo-ring. Not a damn thing happens in that place before 4pm. I wandered the halls like the ghost of Mary Worth trying to find someone, ANYONE worth talking to. Nothing.

Well, not that it wasn't fun politico-spotting. Among today's sitings (again, I am SO not looking each of these guys up online to spell-check):

- Congressman Charlie Rangel

- Cong. Jim McDermott

- Blogger Markos (Kos) - we chatted briefly in the hall, he seemed a bit preoccupied/busy, and surprised that I actually recognized him as we'd never met (I'm actually not sure why I DID recognize him... and, by the way, he's quite cute :-) I later almost shared a very special moment with Kos as I visited the bloggers row at the convention and while passing Kos, who was busily typing, Kos' computer cord wrapped around my foot, someone yelled, and I froze in mid air right before I yanked his computer to the floor. That would have earned me a place in blogging history - Hi, I'm the guy who took DailyKos off the air.

- Blogger Jesse of Pandagon.net - Mike Signorile interviewed him on the show today, he was apparently quite interesting. Nice guy too.

- DC blogger Wonkette who is at the convention working for MTV - who was also looking a bit harried - she's the newest HOT HOT HOT blogger, and I suspect she's being interviewed to death.

- Al Franken. Got to see Al Franken doing his show, and then later walking through the crowd with a big backpack on. Franken cuts a funny figure, duck-walking quickly through the crowd, shoulders rocking back and forth.

- FOX News' Sean Hannity, who was covering the convention for ABC Radio. I know, I can't stand the guy, and have a lifetime refusal in to them about NEVER doing his show (mom made me promise I wouldn't ever do his show, and I won't - turned them down twice already). Just watching him do the show, hearing that annoyingly nasal voice, sucking up to the cops watching him, yuck. Hannity mentioned that he apparently got into a big fight with Al Franken yesterday. No further details on what happened, but it sounds juicy.

- Robert Reich - who is the smallest man in the world - walked by and then interviewed with Hannity. I talked to Reich's people about the article he wrote this past April about the horrors of Bush's second term, if we don't get rid of him. You may recall I posted the article a few days ago. I told his peeps how impressed I, and a lot of you, were with his article and she said she was going to tell him because, apparently, he got some bad feedback after the article initially ran. Some people, liberals included, thought the article was too harsh! She did indicate that attitudes were clearly changing, as now, some 4 months later, more people appreciating the articles take-no-prisoners description of what the next 4 years of a Bush presidency would look like. And getting back to the height issue - I kid you not, the man is like 4 feet tall.

- I also got to speak at length with blogger Nathan of NateKnowsNada.org - nice guy, gay, studying policy sci in graduate school at Harvard, has a partner (sigh). He was unsure about "outing campaign were nobody is really being outed since they're already 'out'" - until I told him about the recent comments by these Republican staffers in the Wash Post and NY Times in which they indicate that being gay is the last issue of concern on the list of things they care about in life. And that several of them actually support the Gay Bashing marriage amendment. He agreed that those people suck.

Other than that, Ted Kennedy just gave his speech, in which he was one of the very few convention speakers to say the G-word (gay). Gephardt is speaking now. I won't be on the floor tonight, as I'll be attending the Planned Parenthood gala at which I'm promised I'll be interviewing a few famous people. If that actually happens, I'll post pictures later.

Anyway, that's it for now. More later. JOHN