The Rally Report
This is my recounting of my experience at the Rally to Restore Sanity.
The Rally was a week ago, and since then it has occupied my thoughts and much of my time, as it has given birth to a raging debate about the tone and content of American politics - a debate which I have been thinking about and taking part in for the better part of the last several days.
I'm in the process of writing a long treatise explaining my thoughts on the Rally and what it means for U.S. politics, but that will be another entry. I'll go into that topic a little bit at the end of this entry, but this one is mostly just an opportunity for me to squee and make you guys super jealous of the awesome time I had. =P
We left Georgia on Thursday night - my sister, my ex Guillem, two guy friends, and me - and drove for 11 hours and arrived at our hotel in suburban Maryland at about 2 A.M. Our hotel was booked for only 4 people, so throughout the whole trip we split up into groups of two and three whenever we entered or left the hotel. Honestly, I would have considered the trip a success just for the fact that we didn't get caught and kicked out of that hotel.
The reason we arrived a day early was to allow ourselves a day to enjoy D.C. and prepare for the Rally on Saturday, so we spent Friday roaming around being tourists. I went to Union Station and bought three of the best turkey sandwiches in the world at my favorite little deli there, and they were delicious - a good enough reason to visit D.C. in and of themselves, really.
On Friday evening we found ourselves at the Capitol end of the National Mall, and we noticed a bunch of tents and a stage being set up, and we ran over to it and immediately starting bouncing and squeeing like little kids. They already had the stage set up, as well as the fences to corral the crowds, the Porta-Potties, and maps detailing the setup of the Mall the next day. People were milling around, taking pictures in front of the stage, holding forth on politics, and everybody just grinning and laughing and so fucking pumped. It was awesome.
But we looked at the maps, and the distance between the first barriers and the stage, and the number of Jumbotrons set up all down the length of the Mall, and we realized that this thing was gonna be big, and if we didn't get there hours early we'd be watching Jon and Stephen on a Jumbotron. But because of the D.C. metro schedule, the earliest we could get to the Mall on Saturday would be 8 A.M. - a mere two hours before the pre-show started.
Unless we took more drastic measures...
So my sister, Guillem and I decided to do something a little crazy: take the last metro from our hotel into D.C. at 2:26 A.M., arrive at the Mall at 3 A.M., and camp out in front of the first barricade. The other two members of our group told us we would freeze to death, but we realized we'd rather freeze to death for the chance to see Stephen & Jon up close than sit in front of a Jumbotron the next day and wonder, "what if?"
My sister, firmly in the Keep Fear Alive camp, was already planning to dress as a zombie, so she decided to stay up all night long perfecting her costume. I tried to sleep that night but was too worried about getting mugged at 3 A.M. in D.C., so neither one of us slept at all. So come 2 A.M., I put on five skirts, three shirts and three coats and we headed to the metro.
When we got there, the first barricade was already lined with George Washington Uni students who'd arrived at 1 A.M., but we staked out a spot up close with a blanket. The atmosphere was amazing. Everybody was freezing but so, so excited. Some people were trying to sleep but most were sitting in groups talking and laughing and networking to see if anybody else had an inside scoop from one of the stagehands or the D.C. police who were monitoring us. Several times somebody would start singing a song and everybody else would join in. There was a particularly rousing group rendition of "Don't Stop Believin'."
There were also several groups of enterprising young folks who'd opted to sleep rather than party all night, and had set up large communal pallets further back on the Mall where it was quiet, so they could sleep all night and still have the best view of the Jumbotrons. I'm pretty sure those people got in trouble with the D.C. police at one point for camping on the Mall, though.
Between 5 and 6 A.M. people started arriving pretty thickly, and of course there were douchebags who decided to cram themselves along the barricade in front of us blanket-dwellers who'd been there for three hours already. So people started realizing that in order to get a good view, we were gonna have to stand up and start jostling for positions. The upshot was that we wound up staying on our feet from 6 A.M. to 3 P.M. because a bunch of assholes couldn't be arsed to get there three hours earlier. So that was really annoying.
People really started arriving around 8 A.M. We knew that because every time we would negotiate a good view of the stage around the heads of the dickholes in front of us, everybody would be forced into different positions by the crush of people behind us. Also, people started arriving with signs. Pretty much nobody who got there at 3 A.M. had time to make a sign. We had other stuff on our minds, like, "Did I get here at 3 A.M. just to stare at this dickwad's head through the whole show?" I hear the crowd as a whole that day was the nicest, friendliest crowd ever, but that's probably because all the assholes were crowding the stage up front. But then, isn't that always the case?
Anyway. We were all deathly bored from 6 to 10, but jostling with our neighbors, cheering for every single thing the stagehands did, and the occasional appearance of a funny sign behind us kept us sane. There was one guy who showed up around 8 A.M. with a sign that said "Somebody get me an Egg McMuffin," and when around 10 A.M. a cheer went up behind us, we turned to see him triumphantly holding his sign in one hand and in the other an Egg McMuffin, which somebody had actually gone and bought for him. ♥
And then around 10 A.M. the preshow started, which was really just a ton of clips from old TDS and TCR episodes and some random animated fluff that was more "WTF?" than anything else. Oh, and a rather lame selection of contemporary pop hits. So two more hours of jostling and boredom, really, with the notable exceptions of every time a Lady Gaga song was played, and when somebody noticed Jack McCoy from Law & Order snapping pictures of the crowd from the control booth and all of us teenagers who grew up with that show went fucking manic over him. He was kind of bewildered at the attention he drew. It was cute.
But finally, finally at noon, shit started getting underway... but then everybody realized it was just the Roots, and yeah they were good and yeah it was nice to have something to dance to, but we'd been there for fucking ever, so we were way less enthused with the Roots & John Legend's one-hour set than the rest of the Mall probably was.
But then the fucking MYTHBUSTERS came out, and we all lost our shit. Everybody in the audience was all, "No way. NO FUCKING WAY." I was texting my parents watching at home, all, "ARE YOU SO JEALOUS OF ME RIGHT NOW???"
Then they told us we were gonna do the wave all the way back to the Washington Monument, and at that moment they showed an aerial pan of the Mall on the onstage screens, and there was a collective gasp from all of us... and then we FLIPPED OUR SHIT. Because we in the front had been there so long, we couldn't see shit behind us. Last we heard there were a few hundred people back there, and all of a sudden onscreen we could see people packed all the way back down the Mall, all those people behind us, all of us part of a massive sea of humanity that had turned out for this rally, and THAT was when we all switched from "my feet are killing me" mode to "I am part of a once-in-a-lifetime experience" mode. The Mythbusters told us there were about 150,000 of us with more arriving, and suddenly we were all hugging each other and jumping up and down and screaming, because we knew we had done it: this thing was BIG, and significant, we were part of it, and it was a heady and really amazing moment.
So the Mythbusters finally got us to quiet down and do the wave, which was FUCKING AWESOME, OKAY, because we were still reeling from the sheer number of us, and sheer significance of this day, and we were up for anything. So we cheered like crazy motherfuckers as we watched the wave travel down the mall, and when the two waves met in the middle and our crazy motherfucker kindred in the middle of the Mall kept both waves going, the Mythbusters were blown away and we were SO FUCKING PROUD of them, of all of us. And yeah, we all thought the whole "laugh politely, laugh like a mad scientist" thing was ridiculous but the roars from the crowd when they told us they actually had a seismometer ready to measure the shock wave produced by all of us jumping were unbelievable. We were cheering for a fucking seismometer. And the sound we made when we all jumped simultaneously was pretty amazing.
But FINALLY Jon came out, and the overwhelming emotion was relief. The cheers for Jon were deafening, and when Stephen popped up on the screen onstage we all launched into the "Stephen, Stephen, Stephen" chant that people do on his show every night, so loudly that we couldn't hear a word from the stage. (His "I'm afraid no one showed up to our rally!" was met with huge cheers.) And from that point on people were too fucking giddy to care about the crazy contortions required to see past the heads of those in front. In the end we wound up only about four people deep in the crowd, and I had a great view for most of the time, so it all worked out. (We all really fucking hated the lucky bitches who got into the VIP section, though, which was between us and the stage. So in reality we were close enough to the stage to see facial expressions but far enough that most of our pictures are very unimpressive.)
I can't remember everything that happened after that... I know I'm gonna forget to add some stuff but I'll do the best I can. There were giant cheers for Ozzy Osbourne, for Formidable Opponent (with Jon! I squeed so hard, for reals), and for pretty much all the people brought out to accept medals. Except that it was a huge fakeout when Stephen started talking about Anderson Cooper, so we were all kind of bummed that it turned out to just be his T-shirt. Everybody was pretty much over Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow and the other musical guests, too. All we really wanted was Jon & Stephen. Oh, but the correspondents got so much love! Jason Jones actually did his interview a little ways away from me. Sadly I could only see the top of his head, but the crowd was all over him. And then Jon's final speech - I'll go into that waaaaay more in depth in my other epic entry, but I'll just tell you that I was sobbing throughout the whole fucking thing. I thought it was so beautiful and earnest, and the whole time I just really, really wished I could pull a lever and magically vote that man President of the United States. If you'll indulge me for a few paragraphs, a bit of an aside regarding my perceptions of Jon and Stephen in their assumed roles as leaders:
The rally was partly an opportunity for those of us who consider Jon & Stephen to be our primary political allegiances to stand up and be counted - which was the main reason I went, to be honest - but since they will likely never be politicians, that impulse is almost unimportant in terms of the real political landscape.
I used to consider Stephen the "leader" who tells people what to do and Jon the lovable curmudgeon who cracks jokes from the sidelines. With his penchant for cooking up crazy schemes for his Nation to carry out - and, of course, his Presidential run in 2008 - I used to consider Stephen the one who most resembled a political leader and the most likely to be the instigator of a political movement. Jon's so self-deprecating, so frequently crass and shameless, and so adamant about his own unimportance that it's sometimes hard to picture him in the position of serious leader of men.
But the rally changed all that. It was Jon's rally 100%. Everybody on the Mall knew that, and Stephen made sure we knew it during the show. Even though he was in character, it was really sweet to see how he stepped aside and suspended his usual scenery chewing to gently direct the spotlight towards Jon.
I know that Jon still doesn't want to lead politically - and probably never will - but despite his intentions, he became our leader anyway, at least for the day. As my sister the Fear supporter put it, most of the people at that rally were there to support Jon, and those who weren't left supporting him anyway. I realized that, while Colbert might get all the headlines and the mindlessly devoted followers, when things get serious, it's Jon to whom we all look to tell us how to make sense of things. And for the first time that I've noticed, at the rally, people were ready to do whatever Jon called them to do, in the way that is usually reserved for Stephen. By the end of his final speech, most of us on the National Mall would have followed him anywhere.
I accept that Jon can never run for office because to do so would prevent him from doing the thing that he loves and the he wouldn't be the Jon Stewart we all love anymore. And the truth is, America probably needs him to stay right where he is. But there is still a little part of me that is crushed every time he assures us that he won't run. At the very least, I wish more Americans watched him. And I hope he knows, even if he doesn't want to admit it, how much we need him.
Okay, srs bzns over. =)
But beyond the serious stuff, Jon and Stephen are just he most adorable men on the earth, you guys, seriously. Jon was so self-deprecating and kind of shy, but also really giggly and happy too, and at the same time there was a seriousness about him. You could really tell how important this rally was to him, how responsible he felt for that audience and for the message he was there to deliver. Stephen, on the other hand, was just there to have fun. He was totally on 95% of the time. When the camera wasn't on him he was making faces at the crowd and doing crazy shit just to keep people whipped up. But the other 5% you could tell he was really keeping tabs on everything that was going on, making sure everything went smoothly. He spent a lot of time whispering with Jon.
Speaking of which, their chemistry. Stephen made Jon giggle before he even got out of the Chilean miner capsule. I think my favorite moment of the entire show was their duet. The love. It was palpable. I loved just seeing them in person, together. I kept taking pictures to memorialize it, lol.
So yeah, I guess that's about it. After the rally I wanted to go to the Democracy Now! event, but we were so fucking exhausted - I ended up staying awake for a total of 39 hours straight - that we just dragged our sorry asses back to the hotel. A lame ending to an epic day, I know. But the trip ended on a high note, as I dragged the whole gang to a Bosnian restaurant on the way out of D.C. and introduced everybody to my favorite European cuisine - and got some cevapi for the first time since I left Bosnia! So fucking good, omg.
-
A few post-rally thoughts:
I've heard that the rally didn't come off nearly as good on TV as it did in person. People have said that the crowd looked sleepy and sounded quiet. That couldn't be further from the truth. Let the record show that we were only sleepy when the Roots and John Legend wouldn't shut up, and that for the rest of the show we were pretty much screaming our heads off. Let the record show that we couldn't have been more fucking excited for Ozzy or the Mythbusters if we had gotten paid for it, and that everybody there was moved by Jon's final speech, no matter what their thoughts on it later, after watching it back 20 times.
At first, I was really worried that we were making the wrong choice to get there at 3 A.M., that we would've enjoyed the rally more from a less stressful position in the middle of the crowd. And yeah, we missed most of the epic costumes and signage and 9 hours on our feet was hell. But we definitely made the right decision - no crowded metro, Jon and Stephen in the flesh, and being part of the immediate audience that the people on stage were playing to and responding to. Also for getting there early we each got a free Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear towel! My sister concluded it was the best day of her life, and I have to say, it was definitely in the top few for me, as well.
Despite missing out on the majority of the crowd camaraderie that defined the rally for a lot of attendees, I've been so proud and inspired by the stories of thousands of strangers trekking for miles to the rally together, supporting each other, and just generally being a lovely crowd. Up front, by the time the rally was in full swing, we were all so happy that we forgot we hated each other for blocking each other's view. There was this tall dickhole who kept trying to nudge in front of me, but by the end of the show he was letting me hang onto his shoulder to see over the people ahead of me. And by the end of it, through standing on our feet for hours on end, we crazy early birds had developed our own kind of camaraderie.
-
Sorry this was so long! If you slogged through that whole thing, let me know and I'll personally deliver you a cookie.*
*Virtual deliveries only.
The Rally was a week ago, and since then it has occupied my thoughts and much of my time, as it has given birth to a raging debate about the tone and content of American politics - a debate which I have been thinking about and taking part in for the better part of the last several days.
I'm in the process of writing a long treatise explaining my thoughts on the Rally and what it means for U.S. politics, but that will be another entry. I'll go into that topic a little bit at the end of this entry, but this one is mostly just an opportunity for me to squee and make you guys super jealous of the awesome time I had. =P
We left Georgia on Thursday night - my sister, my ex Guillem, two guy friends, and me - and drove for 11 hours and arrived at our hotel in suburban Maryland at about 2 A.M. Our hotel was booked for only 4 people, so throughout the whole trip we split up into groups of two and three whenever we entered or left the hotel. Honestly, I would have considered the trip a success just for the fact that we didn't get caught and kicked out of that hotel.
The reason we arrived a day early was to allow ourselves a day to enjoy D.C. and prepare for the Rally on Saturday, so we spent Friday roaming around being tourists. I went to Union Station and bought three of the best turkey sandwiches in the world at my favorite little deli there, and they were delicious - a good enough reason to visit D.C. in and of themselves, really.
On Friday evening we found ourselves at the Capitol end of the National Mall, and we noticed a bunch of tents and a stage being set up, and we ran over to it and immediately starting bouncing and squeeing like little kids. They already had the stage set up, as well as the fences to corral the crowds, the Porta-Potties, and maps detailing the setup of the Mall the next day. People were milling around, taking pictures in front of the stage, holding forth on politics, and everybody just grinning and laughing and so fucking pumped. It was awesome.
But we looked at the maps, and the distance between the first barriers and the stage, and the number of Jumbotrons set up all down the length of the Mall, and we realized that this thing was gonna be big, and if we didn't get there hours early we'd be watching Jon and Stephen on a Jumbotron. But because of the D.C. metro schedule, the earliest we could get to the Mall on Saturday would be 8 A.M. - a mere two hours before the pre-show started.
Unless we took more drastic measures...
So my sister, Guillem and I decided to do something a little crazy: take the last metro from our hotel into D.C. at 2:26 A.M., arrive at the Mall at 3 A.M., and camp out in front of the first barricade. The other two members of our group told us we would freeze to death, but we realized we'd rather freeze to death for the chance to see Stephen & Jon up close than sit in front of a Jumbotron the next day and wonder, "what if?"
My sister, firmly in the Keep Fear Alive camp, was already planning to dress as a zombie, so she decided to stay up all night long perfecting her costume. I tried to sleep that night but was too worried about getting mugged at 3 A.M. in D.C., so neither one of us slept at all. So come 2 A.M., I put on five skirts, three shirts and three coats and we headed to the metro.
When we got there, the first barricade was already lined with George Washington Uni students who'd arrived at 1 A.M., but we staked out a spot up close with a blanket. The atmosphere was amazing. Everybody was freezing but so, so excited. Some people were trying to sleep but most were sitting in groups talking and laughing and networking to see if anybody else had an inside scoop from one of the stagehands or the D.C. police who were monitoring us. Several times somebody would start singing a song and everybody else would join in. There was a particularly rousing group rendition of "Don't Stop Believin'."
There were also several groups of enterprising young folks who'd opted to sleep rather than party all night, and had set up large communal pallets further back on the Mall where it was quiet, so they could sleep all night and still have the best view of the Jumbotrons. I'm pretty sure those people got in trouble with the D.C. police at one point for camping on the Mall, though.
Between 5 and 6 A.M. people started arriving pretty thickly, and of course there were douchebags who decided to cram themselves along the barricade in front of us blanket-dwellers who'd been there for three hours already. So people started realizing that in order to get a good view, we were gonna have to stand up and start jostling for positions. The upshot was that we wound up staying on our feet from 6 A.M. to 3 P.M. because a bunch of assholes couldn't be arsed to get there three hours earlier. So that was really annoying.
People really started arriving around 8 A.M. We knew that because every time we would negotiate a good view of the stage around the heads of the dickholes in front of us, everybody would be forced into different positions by the crush of people behind us. Also, people started arriving with signs. Pretty much nobody who got there at 3 A.M. had time to make a sign. We had other stuff on our minds, like, "Did I get here at 3 A.M. just to stare at this dickwad's head through the whole show?" I hear the crowd as a whole that day was the nicest, friendliest crowd ever, but that's probably because all the assholes were crowding the stage up front. But then, isn't that always the case?
Anyway. We were all deathly bored from 6 to 10, but jostling with our neighbors, cheering for every single thing the stagehands did, and the occasional appearance of a funny sign behind us kept us sane. There was one guy who showed up around 8 A.M. with a sign that said "Somebody get me an Egg McMuffin," and when around 10 A.M. a cheer went up behind us, we turned to see him triumphantly holding his sign in one hand and in the other an Egg McMuffin, which somebody had actually gone and bought for him. ♥
And then around 10 A.M. the preshow started, which was really just a ton of clips from old TDS and TCR episodes and some random animated fluff that was more "WTF?" than anything else. Oh, and a rather lame selection of contemporary pop hits. So two more hours of jostling and boredom, really, with the notable exceptions of every time a Lady Gaga song was played, and when somebody noticed Jack McCoy from Law & Order snapping pictures of the crowd from the control booth and all of us teenagers who grew up with that show went fucking manic over him. He was kind of bewildered at the attention he drew. It was cute.
But finally, finally at noon, shit started getting underway... but then everybody realized it was just the Roots, and yeah they were good and yeah it was nice to have something to dance to, but we'd been there for fucking ever, so we were way less enthused with the Roots & John Legend's one-hour set than the rest of the Mall probably was.
But then the fucking MYTHBUSTERS came out, and we all lost our shit. Everybody in the audience was all, "No way. NO FUCKING WAY." I was texting my parents watching at home, all, "ARE YOU SO JEALOUS OF ME RIGHT NOW???"
Then they told us we were gonna do the wave all the way back to the Washington Monument, and at that moment they showed an aerial pan of the Mall on the onstage screens, and there was a collective gasp from all of us... and then we FLIPPED OUR SHIT. Because we in the front had been there so long, we couldn't see shit behind us. Last we heard there were a few hundred people back there, and all of a sudden onscreen we could see people packed all the way back down the Mall, all those people behind us, all of us part of a massive sea of humanity that had turned out for this rally, and THAT was when we all switched from "my feet are killing me" mode to "I am part of a once-in-a-lifetime experience" mode. The Mythbusters told us there were about 150,000 of us with more arriving, and suddenly we were all hugging each other and jumping up and down and screaming, because we knew we had done it: this thing was BIG, and significant, we were part of it, and it was a heady and really amazing moment.
So the Mythbusters finally got us to quiet down and do the wave, which was FUCKING AWESOME, OKAY, because we were still reeling from the sheer number of us, and sheer significance of this day, and we were up for anything. So we cheered like crazy motherfuckers as we watched the wave travel down the mall, and when the two waves met in the middle and our crazy motherfucker kindred in the middle of the Mall kept both waves going, the Mythbusters were blown away and we were SO FUCKING PROUD of them, of all of us. And yeah, we all thought the whole "laugh politely, laugh like a mad scientist" thing was ridiculous but the roars from the crowd when they told us they actually had a seismometer ready to measure the shock wave produced by all of us jumping were unbelievable. We were cheering for a fucking seismometer. And the sound we made when we all jumped simultaneously was pretty amazing.
But FINALLY Jon came out, and the overwhelming emotion was relief. The cheers for Jon were deafening, and when Stephen popped up on the screen onstage we all launched into the "Stephen, Stephen, Stephen" chant that people do on his show every night, so loudly that we couldn't hear a word from the stage. (His "I'm afraid no one showed up to our rally!" was met with huge cheers.) And from that point on people were too fucking giddy to care about the crazy contortions required to see past the heads of those in front. In the end we wound up only about four people deep in the crowd, and I had a great view for most of the time, so it all worked out. (We all really fucking hated the lucky bitches who got into the VIP section, though, which was between us and the stage. So in reality we were close enough to the stage to see facial expressions but far enough that most of our pictures are very unimpressive.)
I can't remember everything that happened after that... I know I'm gonna forget to add some stuff but I'll do the best I can. There were giant cheers for Ozzy Osbourne, for Formidable Opponent (with Jon! I squeed so hard, for reals), and for pretty much all the people brought out to accept medals. Except that it was a huge fakeout when Stephen started talking about Anderson Cooper, so we were all kind of bummed that it turned out to just be his T-shirt. Everybody was pretty much over Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow and the other musical guests, too. All we really wanted was Jon & Stephen. Oh, but the correspondents got so much love! Jason Jones actually did his interview a little ways away from me. Sadly I could only see the top of his head, but the crowd was all over him. And then Jon's final speech - I'll go into that waaaaay more in depth in my other epic entry, but I'll just tell you that I was sobbing throughout the whole fucking thing. I thought it was so beautiful and earnest, and the whole time I just really, really wished I could pull a lever and magically vote that man President of the United States. If you'll indulge me for a few paragraphs, a bit of an aside regarding my perceptions of Jon and Stephen in their assumed roles as leaders:
The rally was partly an opportunity for those of us who consider Jon & Stephen to be our primary political allegiances to stand up and be counted - which was the main reason I went, to be honest - but since they will likely never be politicians, that impulse is almost unimportant in terms of the real political landscape.
I used to consider Stephen the "leader" who tells people what to do and Jon the lovable curmudgeon who cracks jokes from the sidelines. With his penchant for cooking up crazy schemes for his Nation to carry out - and, of course, his Presidential run in 2008 - I used to consider Stephen the one who most resembled a political leader and the most likely to be the instigator of a political movement. Jon's so self-deprecating, so frequently crass and shameless, and so adamant about his own unimportance that it's sometimes hard to picture him in the position of serious leader of men.
But the rally changed all that. It was Jon's rally 100%. Everybody on the Mall knew that, and Stephen made sure we knew it during the show. Even though he was in character, it was really sweet to see how he stepped aside and suspended his usual scenery chewing to gently direct the spotlight towards Jon.
I know that Jon still doesn't want to lead politically - and probably never will - but despite his intentions, he became our leader anyway, at least for the day. As my sister the Fear supporter put it, most of the people at that rally were there to support Jon, and those who weren't left supporting him anyway. I realized that, while Colbert might get all the headlines and the mindlessly devoted followers, when things get serious, it's Jon to whom we all look to tell us how to make sense of things. And for the first time that I've noticed, at the rally, people were ready to do whatever Jon called them to do, in the way that is usually reserved for Stephen. By the end of his final speech, most of us on the National Mall would have followed him anywhere.
I accept that Jon can never run for office because to do so would prevent him from doing the thing that he loves and the he wouldn't be the Jon Stewart we all love anymore. And the truth is, America probably needs him to stay right where he is. But there is still a little part of me that is crushed every time he assures us that he won't run. At the very least, I wish more Americans watched him. And I hope he knows, even if he doesn't want to admit it, how much we need him.
Okay, srs bzns over. =)
But beyond the serious stuff, Jon and Stephen are just he most adorable men on the earth, you guys, seriously. Jon was so self-deprecating and kind of shy, but also really giggly and happy too, and at the same time there was a seriousness about him. You could really tell how important this rally was to him, how responsible he felt for that audience and for the message he was there to deliver. Stephen, on the other hand, was just there to have fun. He was totally on 95% of the time. When the camera wasn't on him he was making faces at the crowd and doing crazy shit just to keep people whipped up. But the other 5% you could tell he was really keeping tabs on everything that was going on, making sure everything went smoothly. He spent a lot of time whispering with Jon.
Speaking of which, their chemistry. Stephen made Jon giggle before he even got out of the Chilean miner capsule. I think my favorite moment of the entire show was their duet. The love. It was palpable. I loved just seeing them in person, together. I kept taking pictures to memorialize it, lol.
So yeah, I guess that's about it. After the rally I wanted to go to the Democracy Now! event, but we were so fucking exhausted - I ended up staying awake for a total of 39 hours straight - that we just dragged our sorry asses back to the hotel. A lame ending to an epic day, I know. But the trip ended on a high note, as I dragged the whole gang to a Bosnian restaurant on the way out of D.C. and introduced everybody to my favorite European cuisine - and got some cevapi for the first time since I left Bosnia! So fucking good, omg.
-
A few post-rally thoughts:
I've heard that the rally didn't come off nearly as good on TV as it did in person. People have said that the crowd looked sleepy and sounded quiet. That couldn't be further from the truth. Let the record show that we were only sleepy when the Roots and John Legend wouldn't shut up, and that for the rest of the show we were pretty much screaming our heads off. Let the record show that we couldn't have been more fucking excited for Ozzy or the Mythbusters if we had gotten paid for it, and that everybody there was moved by Jon's final speech, no matter what their thoughts on it later, after watching it back 20 times.
At first, I was really worried that we were making the wrong choice to get there at 3 A.M., that we would've enjoyed the rally more from a less stressful position in the middle of the crowd. And yeah, we missed most of the epic costumes and signage and 9 hours on our feet was hell. But we definitely made the right decision - no crowded metro, Jon and Stephen in the flesh, and being part of the immediate audience that the people on stage were playing to and responding to. Also for getting there early we each got a free Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear towel! My sister concluded it was the best day of her life, and I have to say, it was definitely in the top few for me, as well.
Despite missing out on the majority of the crowd camaraderie that defined the rally for a lot of attendees, I've been so proud and inspired by the stories of thousands of strangers trekking for miles to the rally together, supporting each other, and just generally being a lovely crowd. Up front, by the time the rally was in full swing, we were all so happy that we forgot we hated each other for blocking each other's view. There was this tall dickhole who kept trying to nudge in front of me, but by the end of the show he was letting me hang onto his shoulder to see over the people ahead of me. And by the end of it, through standing on our feet for hours on end, we crazy early birds had developed our own kind of camaraderie.
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Sorry this was so long! If you slogged through that whole thing, let me know and I'll personally deliver you a cookie.*
*Virtual deliveries only.