Gloria and Obama

Bill, Lynne, Edgar, Glenn, Will, Jim, Steve G, Bobb, Barbara, Bob, Gloria, Jeanette, Steve L
Oct 19

It was a rare and delightful treat to see Gloria in Conrads, complete with wide-brimmed black straw hat and now-obligatory bluetooth earpiece (no one phoned, but who cares?).
Gloria told an extraordinary story of how she got into the Democratic convention and witnessed Obama's acceptance speech, Greek pillars and all.
Seems her daughter urged her to go to Denver, even though she didn't have a ticket or any documentation, or even a hotel room. But Gloria found a hotel on the outskirts of Denver, and they advised her to drive into one of the hotels nearer in and park there.
Milling around in there, she came across a lady who had a spare pass to the Convention. 'I didn't know who to give it to, but I guess this is yours,' she told Gloria.
The bus wouldn't take Gloria to the the Investec arena because she wasn't an accredited delegate, so she decided to hop a cab. She shared with a journalist from the Chicago Tribune, who refused any help with the fare because it was on expenses - so Gloria got to the Convention on Sam Zell's tab!
She apparently had an excellent seat, some way from the platform, but within reach of VIPs such as Bill Richardson - and she met several friends and relatives from Denver as well as her home town. Only Gloria....
It just goes to show how far you can get with a little patience, persistence, politeness, inoffensiveness and sweet reasonableness. Being a little old lady helps, too.
Will has many of those qualities, except the last, and they could yet get him his cherished goal of becoming a governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures. He was talking about it at length, painting an image of an anachronistic organization that just happens to own one of the media world's most valuable franchises - the Oscars.
Short of being nominated for an Oscar, entry to the Academy seems to be a tortuous process ruled by obscure committees packed with accountants in suits who couldn't tell a decent cinematic performance if it smacked them in the eye. The consequence is that creatives like Will have to wait for a stroke of fate - the right person in the right position at the right time - to get them in.
And it's all that times ten for one of the coveted governorships, which seem to come up about as often as a seat on the Supreme Court. Not only are there a limited number of places, the competition is that much more fierce, with secret telephone campaigns for individual candidates.
None of that is Will's style of course, so he waits his turn. Would he like to be a governor?
'It would be very nice,' he said, looking into the distance.
As Sarah Palin would put it - You Betcha!
The betting doesn't look great for Jim's friend, Phil Spector, as he undergoes a retrial for the murder of Lana Clarkson, starting this week and going on for two or three months.
It's not so much what Spector did that night in February 2003, so much as the criteria for a conviction for second-degree murder. Some reports suggest that the victim merely has to die in the accused's house, and she certainly did that.
But Jim visited with Spector recently and he was apparently in remarkably good spirits, with a new lawyer and what he believed is a strong case. Let's hope so: the penalty is 18 years inside, a terrible blow at Spector's age - 69 in December.

CAUGHT ON THE BREEZE
I didn't want to sound like a stupid fan, but I was
The trouble is there is no fucking outrage in this country
I'm recording all I can while I can, before my voice and fingers seize up
Running the Academy is just a chance for people to throw tomatoes at you
If McCain keeled over we'd all be in a bowl of shit
Before the war you could drop out of sixth grade able to read and write - now you can come out of UCLA without being able to do that