(no subject)
I gave a damned good talk yesterday. Given how badly I wanted to skip this particular (miserably managed, miserly, misguided) conference, I think it's wonderfully ironic that I got to kick ass and take names. My favorite moment came when we left the stage. My friend D. was also on the panel, and absolutely had to be on an international flight 90 minutes after the panel ended... which meant he had to get out of the venue without doing all the standard post-panel shmoozing that happens at conferences. So I drew on memories of high school football and pretended to be a pulling guard blocking for a wiry running back. I got him out the door - literally using a (very gentle) stiff-arm at one point to fend off a particularly persistent photographer - then spun around to face the crowd that was following us. I discovered that I was pinned against a wall, trapped in a corner, with twenty people clamboring to give me business cards. Very rock star.
In the audience for the talk was one of Amy Goodman's producers for Democracy Now - she'd invited me to be on her show when she was in Qatar, but our schedules didn't work out. So she invited me this time... to show up at Stanford University at 4:45 am for a 5 am broadcast. I dutifully woke up at 4am, didn't bother shaving for a radio appearance, threw on some clothes and met the driver outside. I asked him if I was the only person going to the studio - he confirmed I was, and we zoomed off to Stanford.
About four miles from campus, my phone rang - the producer, wondering why we'd abandoned the other guest at the hotel. (Perhaps because you told the driver he was only picking up one guy, dude...) The driver also didn't know where we were going - we poked around random corners of campus for about ten minutes before finding Stanford's secret video facility. I finally found the place by geting out of the car and reading roadsigns... and I think I've figured out why the left is powerless in America: if we can't get guests to a talk show, we're never going to retake the White House.
We all made it to the studio and the taping went well. It was, alas, not a radio spot. She tapes all shows as TV and rebroadcasts the audio as radio... while the video audience is about a hundredth of the radio audience, I felt pretty bad about showing up scruffy and in an army green polo shirt. Not my finest sartorial moment. I evidently presented some problems for whoever does transcripts of her shows. Speaking about one of our writers who is currently detained by the Egyptian government, I mentioned that he worked as an open source Drupal developer. A friend just pointed out that the rush transcript of the show describes him as an "open source gerbil developer". The mind boggles.
Despite the whole not sleeping bit, it's been a remarkably successful trip, mostly in the sense that I was dreading it and had a great time. And now I'm in first class, looking out over the snow-capped mountains around Lake Tahoe and wishing all my trips turned out this well.
In the audience for the talk was one of Amy Goodman's producers for Democracy Now - she'd invited me to be on her show when she was in Qatar, but our schedules didn't work out. So she invited me this time... to show up at Stanford University at 4:45 am for a 5 am broadcast. I dutifully woke up at 4am, didn't bother shaving for a radio appearance, threw on some clothes and met the driver outside. I asked him if I was the only person going to the studio - he confirmed I was, and we zoomed off to Stanford.
About four miles from campus, my phone rang - the producer, wondering why we'd abandoned the other guest at the hotel. (Perhaps because you told the driver he was only picking up one guy, dude...) The driver also didn't know where we were going - we poked around random corners of campus for about ten minutes before finding Stanford's secret video facility. I finally found the place by geting out of the car and reading roadsigns... and I think I've figured out why the left is powerless in America: if we can't get guests to a talk show, we're never going to retake the White House.
We all made it to the studio and the taping went well. It was, alas, not a radio spot. She tapes all shows as TV and rebroadcasts the audio as radio... while the video audience is about a hundredth of the radio audience, I felt pretty bad about showing up scruffy and in an army green polo shirt. Not my finest sartorial moment. I evidently presented some problems for whoever does transcripts of her shows. Speaking about one of our writers who is currently detained by the Egyptian government, I mentioned that he worked as an open source Drupal developer. A friend just pointed out that the rush transcript of the show describes him as an "open source gerbil developer". The mind boggles.
Despite the whole not sleeping bit, it's been a remarkably successful trip, mostly in the sense that I was dreading it and had a great time. And now I'm in first class, looking out over the snow-capped mountains around Lake Tahoe and wishing all my trips turned out this well.