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On the stereo: Fleetwood Mac, “Walk a Thin Line”

My nearest frame of reference for a political convention like the DNCC is SXSW, the annual indie rock melee in Austin, Texas. We’ve been there as a band a handful of times, and I’ve been twice on my own. It’s a train wreck of logistics: Hundreds of bands (many self-managed and very literally independent) trying desperately to find their credentials, their gigs, their accommodations (often the floors of friends) and perhaps most importantly their free beer. There’s definitely free beer to be found, but it’s something of a treasure hunt in Austin.

The free drinks seem easier to come by here at the DNCC, but everything else is much more difficult than SXSW. For one, there are black helicopters everywhere and snipers on rooftops, that sort of thing. More riot cops than I remember even at the WTO in Seattle in 1999. And mounted police. Bigass horses on every corner between about 15th and 19th Streets, for a few blocks on either side of Broadway downtown.

I’m desperately trying to get my bearings here in Denver — this here mess is tricky to navigate, both in physical and logistical terms. Last night, though, I was lucky enough to get into the reception for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s quite the force, much more commanding in person than she sometimes appears on television, and she led an impressive pep rally for the hundred or so House reps, TV producers and guests gathered there. Free wine, but no beer to be found. Funny little expensive-looking hors d’oeuvres. And I think Henry Winkler was there.

My new favorite rep, though, is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from Florida’s 20th district — Broward County, including Fort Lauderdale. She introduced the speaker at the reception, and while I won’t claim to know much about her legislative history (though she appears to be quite the firebrand, looking through her House page), I was fully taken aback by her authority, her warmth and her ability to actually speak into a microphone (not just near it, as is so often the case. There should be some kind of microphone test in public speaker school; you just sound like a wimp if you don’t do it right). She is, as they say, the real deal.

A little later last night I was introduced to Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont who is, in my personal opinion, a total badass. If it weren’t for his leadership (he’s the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) we’d still be stuck with Alberto “Howdy Doody” Gonzales as our Attorney General. And of course I froze when I met him and couldn’t say much more than “thank you” and polite stuff like that. But I was reminded yet again, as I have been many times over the last 10 years, that I play in a band with a uniquely difficult name: Death Cab for Cutie isn’t the sort of moniker that any career politician can get too cozy with, without some serious scrutiny. And Leahy is the very definition of “career politician.” It was a pleasant and affirmative, but very short, interaction. Suffice it to say that I doubt we’ll be texting one another in the days ahead.

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On the stereo: “Late-Century Dream,” Superchunk

The level of meta-meta-meta-post-everythingness around this event has me a little rattled. There are 15,000 journalists here. Is there reason for every last one of them to be here? No. Probably not even a third of them.

The Pepsi Center itself is a labyrinth of caves and passageways, wired with miles upon miles of CAT-5 cable to accommodate all these bloggers, TV and radio types, thousands of cameras and laptops and passenger pigeons and every other media transmission type you can imagine. No one really knows where they’re going yet, and no one has enough time to get anything done quite the way they’d like; we did an interview (which went really well, thankfully) with Melissa Long for CNN, but the lighting director didn’t get the three minutes he was promised to do his thing, and he spent the minutes after the interview apologizing profusely for how we were gonna look on national TV. But, you know, we’re a rock band. No one cares how we look, least of all us. Ha! Not really. But kind of.

Last night was pretty incredible. Much has been written already about how moving the Lion’s speech was; how cute the Obamas’ kids are; how Michelle absolutely owned it. It was amazing to be here, and it’s why I was so frustrated with some of the commentary I saw afterwards. As in, what convention was James Carville at, anyway? I think he must have been in some other building. The thing I saw last night was far from a squandered opportunity. I doubt it’ll go down as a transformative moment in American political history, but I do think it caught the zeitgeist. It felt right. I hope he got some good sleep.

Bill O’Reilly walked into the lobby of the Grand Hyatt as Ben, Nick and I were standing there this afternoon. He’s very tall, maybe 6′3″, which surprised me, because he’s such a small man. I’ve never felt the urge to throw the first punch like I did at that moment, but I didn’t, because then I’d be “that guy.” But then again, I’d be “that guy”!! And wouldn’t that make me a kind of wingnut lefty superhero? Like, where Al Franken would make me lunch?

One other note: I caught up with Senator Leahy again this morning. I had him all wrong: He’s a huge Dead Head (in fact, GD drummer Mickey Hart was at the reception) and actually has a cameo in The Dark Night. We hung out for a bit. I might have to move to Vermont.