Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Taking this picture was pretty fun.

Howdy.

You'd think that the recent negative attention heaped on the McCallister campaign as a result of my bridal shop exposé would get me a little juice with my Adamson peoples. 

Not quite.  Or if there is a reward, it seems that Karen thinks it should   involve me crouching outside the window of the Walker home in Pasadena, filming the torturous moments of a family waiting to find out if one of their own is even alive.  This was hell for them and me.  After ten minutes, I called Karen and flatly refused to continue.

Despite some initial hemming and hawing, Karen soon acknowledged that Margaret had requested a leave of absence from stumping with McCallister -- an apparent family emergency in Key West.  "You can ride with Mac for now," she said, before adding, in a disgruntled tone that should have tipped me off to future miseries, "Don't blow it, Lenny."

My new journey began as I dropped off my rental car in Los Angeles.  Karen, penny pincher that she is, mandated that I return it a full eight hours before my flight, to save the cost of an additional pro-rated  day.  Obviously I'm not reaping the benefits of our recent spike in the polls.

This extra time bumming around LA did allow me to realize just how much I loathe carrying all of my possessions.  Lugging that camera equipment is giving me adult onset scoliosis.

Billions of trillions of Angelenos pass through the fabled MetroLink daily.

With a little time to kill, I decided that a little housecleaning was in order.  If I’m going to be this super nomadic videographer guy, I need to minimize things just a bit.  I’m not looking to go full-on naturalist a la Henry David Thoreau, but at the very least I'll take page out of Boxcar Willie's book and make do with a mere sack on a stick. 
 

Looking to lighten my load, I located a Goodwill Donation Center.  Entering the store, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia.  In younger, more liberal days, nothing satisfied my thirst for commonality with the working man like a few hours of feverish browsing at a neighborhood thrift store.

I'd even stopped in a couple times in the last year -- Goodwill being as trusty a spot as any for scoring barely-worn Brooks Bros. attire.  Alas, now I found myself at the donations desk.  And they say Republicans don't care about the less fortunate!

After unloading a suitcase there, I set forth for my next destination: the Apple Store.  Home of the most smug and pretentious little tech support-house in the world, the genius bar.

My purpose here was to make a subtraction by means of addition.  While hauling 612 cds of Raul Julia reading Don Quixote can be plenty of fun, hauling those same discs in one teeny-tiny iPod is called heaven.  With that in mind, I picked up their sexy new touch-screen model and made my way to Union Station.

The subway in Los Angeles sees less traffic than anywhere within a hundred-mile radius.  Inside it's like a library.  So I seized this rare, quiet opportunity to begin painstakingly loading up my new toy with each disc in my 612 volume audiobook.  I was on disc 57 when it was time to rise from the depths and catch my bus to the airport.

Exiting the station, I approached an informational kiosk.  Like most, it had a red dot indicating my present location along with the words, “You are here."

Reading the phrase had me craving one of my favorite songs from last year:   Nathan Fake’s “You Are Here”.  Now, with a quick transfer from my laptop to "Kitty" (that’s what I named her -- I know it's weird, but it was the first name that popped into my head), I can scratch that itch.

As I blissed out on the bus, my anticipation of getting on the road again grew.   Unlike some of my friends in college, I never took a summer to travel the country following Phish.  This is the closest I’ll get to my rock tour and believe me, I'm fine with that.

My former high school best friend.  Former.

This week, McCallister was doing a steady diet of stumping throughout the Midwest.  Next up:  Iowa’s “fields of opportunities," from which he'd board a bus while I followed in my rental car. 

But rather than fly me to Iowa, Karen had me coming in to Omaha, Neb. the day before Bobby McC touches down at Des Moines Intl. Airport to deliver a speech right there on the tarmac.  Yep, I’ve got to hop in a rental car and drive 130 miles on I-80 -- leaving one airport and heading directly to another.

I had to call Karen out on this one.  Her vengefulness had gone too far -- she was now blatantly making my life miserable for her own enjoyment.   When I finally got her on the phone regarding my less than logical itinerary, though, she blamed Accounting.

"Yeah, they claimed that after factoring in all costs incurred, your fly-n-drive would save over $142 for the campaign.”  I tried offering her a $142 donation out of my own pocket, just so I wouldn’t have to drive my   already exhausted self.  No dice.  "Sorry, Lenny.  It's all   politics."  Before she hung up, I heard a mysterious female voice in the background.  I'd bet you my hairline it was Margaret asking her for the sunblock.

Our smooth flight touched down ahead of schedule.  Ready to rock, I jumped in my econo-rental and began my march East to Des Moines, relishing the opportunity to have nothing but open road in front of me.

I briefly pondered visiting the world’s largest ball of stamps as I left Omaha…ah well, there's always next time.  I crossed the state line into the Hawkeye State.  Endless corn fields on my left.  Endless wheat fields on my right.

As I arrived at the tarmac and made my way toward the front of the rally, McCallister was already into his remarks.  He was talking about what else, corn fields.  It’s these very fields that have Iowa on the cusp of an energy revolution.  And, I thought to myself, it’s this very reason why Iowa in '08 has taken on a significance that far outweighs the Straw Poll.

I looked around at the folks in the rally.  Unlike me, they were actually listening to this tan man.  And why not?  He was addressing an issue that would affect them and their children for years to come.

I was once again filled with disgust for my job.  Where was the wisdom at the Adamson campaign?  If they spent one-tenth the time listening to constituents that they spent spying on the aggrieved and devising byzantine travel routes for their flunkies, we'd be an extra 6 points ahead in the polls.  Why, if Karen, that... low-quality human, would stop shacking up with the sexually impressionable and focus on her job--

I stopped.  I must have been muttering aloud because people were staring at me.  Realizing Senator McC's speeches were the one place I didn't need to pay attention, and still unable to rid myself of the Nathan Fake earworm that had infested my brain, I grabbed my new touchscreen "Kitty"  and pulled a quick search to see what Mr. Fake was up to these days.

Lo and behold, Border Community just released a series of “You are Here” remixes.  This has gone beyond making my day.  God bless technology.

Many people are quite skeptical of remixes, especially if it’s a reworking of   one of your favorite songs.  Not me.  Sure, I’ll be the first to admit they’re typically hit or miss.  But at the very least I may get to love something new out of something old.  And it struck me this was the essence of politics:  New mouths delivering the same old messages over and over, mixing up the syntax for the moment at hand.  And there was nothing wrong with that.  In fact, it was sort of inherently conservative...

I awoke from this daze as the Senator finished to a joyous ovation from the crowd.  But his flesh-pressing routine was cut short by a grave Travis March, the campaign manager, who whispered in his ear.  McCallister's expression hardened with resolve.  I wondered....

Then he was taken away, leaving the bus scheduled to bring him to Cedar Rapids waiting, empty.  Within a couple minutes he was on a plane, flying off into the setting sun.

Hmmm?  This wasn't planned.

I need to call my contacts and figure out just what is going on here.

Confused as #$@%,
Leonard