7:00. Jack is having trouble switching gears to election coverage, after a month of tense October baseball. "Can Bush bring in Mariano Rivera when he gets within three states of winning? What does it mean if Kerry goes to the bullpen in the eighth?"
7:12. My vegan pumpkin pie comes out of the oven and I prepare to head to Berkeley. The tastiness of the pie is judged "too close to call" by kitchen pundits. Zogby International says that the pie is actually a tray of blueberry muffins.
7:40. The pie is knocked over for the first of what would prove to be four separate times on the journey eastward. It ends up as sort of a pumpkin pudding, in a graham cracker shell.
8:35. BART, Richmond line. Two drunken passengers are railing against Bush and the electoral college. One of them claims that if he had an Uzi, he'd assassinate the president for $100,000. The other guy says he'd do it for $200. No one is impressed, except the Secret Service agents waiting at El Cerrito Plaza.
8:45. After interrogating other passengers for five minutes about whether they voted for Kerry (and inadvertently knocking over my pie again), our $200 version of Lee Harvey admits that he didn't vote at all.
9:15. I finally arrive. Allen makes me some rice noodles. Florida has been called for Bush since I left SF, along with every other state without a coastline. Peter Jennings is unruffled, the smug Canadian bastard.
9:25. We decide that we're bored with ABC and decide to check other channels. Tyler struggles with the remote, while I advocate for CBS and Dan Rather.
"It's getting pretty late on the East Coast", I say. "This is when Dan Rather gets tired and starts explaining everything in elaborate metaphors about swamps and alligators."
Two minutes later, Rather tells Bob Schieffer, "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun."
9:45. Proposition N, summarized on the KGO newsticker as "Withdraw Troops From Iraq", is passing overwhelmingly in San Francisco. Gavin Newsom helicopters to the Presidio in combat fatigues and declares, "Mission Accomplished!"
10:00. Nobody knows the name of the cyborg-like Fox News anchor. I'm going with "The R-1000".
10:15. Tyler receives a phone call just as ABC calls Oregon for Kerry. The seven electoral votes from Oregon narrow Bush's lead to roughly 70, thought Fox News has him ahead by 152. Triumphantly, I begin to celebrate and disrupt Tyler's phone call. "Oregon, bitches, Oregon! Seven votes! Salem what? Portland what?"
10:20. Tom Brokaw is now simply reading aloud whatever random facts are placed in front of him. "Great tradition, Ohio," he drones. He then lists the seven presidents that were born in Ohio. Allen is in the kitchen for this. When he comes out, I ask, "Did you know that seven US presidents were born in Ohio?" Tyler and I proceed to recite them all to a weirded-out Allen.
10:25. Peter Jennings goes to ABC's "terror expert", reporting from a silent office building about Al Qaeda's efforts to undermine the election. He concludes that the US has done a fine job keeping the elections safe, but cautions that, "Tomorrow, the focus shifts to the holiday season."
10:40. Tim Russert is sharing the anchor desk with Brokaw on NBC. He has a teleprompter which he's using to calculate electoral vote scenarios. We don't see the initial explanation when we flip to NBC, just Russert's childish handwriting and elementary school-level artithmetic filling the screen. Tyler speculates that Ms. Thompson's second grade class is weighing in with their electoral prediction. I wonder if John Madden sees this amateurish teleprompter usage and shoots his televsion.
10:55. CBS refuses to call Ohio, even after every other network has done so. Dan Rather reminds us that CBS is broadcasting from "Accuracy Central", which may or may not be located between the crick and the fishin' hole.
11:05. A conversation with Allen:
ALLEN: Scotch?
SEAN: Yes.
ALLEN: Ice?
SEAN: Yes.
ALLEN: Water?
BROKAW: At this point, it would take a miracle for John Kerry to come back.
SEAN: No.
11:11. Who will be the scapegoat when Kerry loses? The Las Vegas odds:
Gay Marriage - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 5:2
Terry McAuliffe - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3:1
Michael Moore - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 6:1
The Curse of the Bambino - - - - - - - - - 9:1
Ralph Nader (for old times' sake)- - - - 20:1
"Lambert Field" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 25:1
Howard Dean's yell - - - - - - - - - - - - - 75:1
John Kerry himself - - - - - - - - - - - - 100:1
George Lakoff - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1,000: 1
11:25. I wish we could see some proposition-specific victory parties. Specifically, the supporters of Oakland's initiative to make enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority of the police. I like to think that Too Short spent the day calling likely voters and reminding them to go to the polls. Berkeley's "Grow as much pot as you want and nobody can say shit" initiative appears to be losing a close race.
I'd also like to see prosecutors whooping it up and high-fiving each other about the DNA database for felons. Or a bunch of somber tribal casino owners playing blackjack dejectedly. Or, a live shot of some anti-66 activists getting together and beating prisoners with billy clubs and lengths of rubber tubing, because you know they're totally doing that.
11:45. Tim Russert is showing far more wear than any other TV talking head. His hair is messed up, his eyes look bloodshot, and he appears to have grown quite a bit of stubble in the last hour. In contrast, Brian Williams looks like he's just had a facial, a massage, and sex with Tim Russert's wife.
12:05. I have decided that the entire state of Ohio is worthless. Fuck Chad Johnson, William Howard Taft, Alex P. Keaton, Drew Carey, Lake Erie, Chief Wahoo, Jeff Garcia, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and especially Pete Rose.
12:30. I'm drinking more scotch. No one is paying attention to the coverage any more. Someone begins a discussion of exotic places to have sex at Berkeley's vegetarian co-op. When the conversation turns into a debate over hot tub sex, and I hear the phrase "vaginal bacteria", it's clearly time to go.
1:00. Relocation to Albany. We fearfully eat tacos and lose more hope with each bite. Possibly, this is due to grease and not despair.
1:30. Aaron is drunk, and passionately stumping for the election of Josiah Bartlett. Matt socks him. He then switches to his alternate stump speech, "Libertarians are fags". Matt socks him again.
2:05. Fox News presents "a conservative and a liberal" to talk about the status of the election. The conservative begins by talking about the negative media coverage of President Bush. They go to the liberal, and he begins discussing why Kerry and Edwards need to concede as soon as possible, in order to heal America.
Aaron and I begin arguing about which guy is in fact the liberal. It was especially unclear after they both agreed that Kerry was embarrassing himself and America.
2:15. Wolf Blitzer is a machine. He's still up, methodically running down the county-by-county voting possibilities in New Mexico. For whatever reason, Larry King is also still up, though he doesn't appear to have moved nor spoken in at least half an hour. Finally, a producer escorts Larry off the set as he mutters, "See you in four years."
I thought long and hard about Ohio, and if it, indeed, had anything of value. I came up with one person and one entity.
Former Reds and Yankees outfielder Paul O'Neill.
The Afghan Whigs.
The hell with everything else in the state.
Because we can never have enough threads about Pie and Politics.
I think it's unfair to blame Ohio for this; half the country voted for McMoron, even in states where the smart people are supposed to live. Obviously it's not Ohio that's in the wrong, but the entire country. And I say if they want a retard in the White House, let 'em have him--in four years we can point and laugh at their regretful, jobless, toothless faces.
And we can also point and laugh at all of the penniless people in foreign nations we've bombed into oblivion, the women who were denied the sanctity of their own bodies, and the gays who were denied their 'inalienable' rights.
I eat McMorons for breakfast. Give me a sausage McMoron anyday.
Don't be silly--foreigners, women, and gays aren't real people...
you should know that gene's howling laughter while reading this post last night interrupted my buffy marathon. and now i'm disturbing my coworkers with my own thumb-monkey screechings.