Obamacon, Day 1

I tried to watch Michelle Obama’s speech, but I was distracted by my girl bitching at Wikipedia. I had foolishly informed her that, as part of my research on yesterday’s piece on insipid college students, I had found a long and extensive article on her alma mater’s drinking game of choice. So in between Mrs. Obama talking about how totally awesome the Mister is, I got snippets about only a Goddamned midget could play Beer Die from a standing position, and dark intonations of nuking Skidmore College for making new rules and raping the purity of a game that’s only exists to make somebody, anybody, vomit.

That’s life in The American Jerk Home Office: we don’t have sober debates about politics because we’re never sober, and our demands of political candidates usually shift on a dime from universal health care and responsible reduction of the defecit to Constitutional amendments standardizing the rules of drinking games and the violent overthrow and annihilation of a small part of upstate New York. And sometimes on Whiskey Saturday, the destruction of everything south of Providence and west of Worcester.

The thing is, you didn’t really need to pay attention to Mrs. Obama’s speech because it went pretty much the way you’d expect: Barack’s just like you, we’re a normal American household, and we’re in touch with your needs… although clearly not with my household’s needs, because her eyes were clear and focused and she didn’t distractedly mutter about the invasion and occupation of Saratoga Springs.

Which is exactly how every reasonable person would expect her speech would go; the only people who really thought that she would start jabbering in Arabic and swinging a detonator on it’s cord like Roger Daltrey with a hard-on for revenge were, well, my dad. And he was probably watching Mrs. Obama’s speech on Fox News and giggling while Bill O’Reilly chromakeyed devil’s horns and leprosy lesions on her face.

Having half-watched the speech, it seemed like everything about it went off as pitch perfect as the Democrats clearly wanted it to… except for her face, which was Goddamned disturbing. This woman is 44 years old, and she didn’t have a line, mark or groove on her face at all. It was like she was either tanked to the clavicles on Botox or hatched from a vat with just enough time before the speech to stuff her into a blue dress. I half-expected Rick Deckard to storm the stage and blow her out of her socks.

In short, Obamacon has begun, and as a veteran of a few large conventions, I can only tell you that it will be exhausting. Unless you have a big backlog on your TiVo, there will be no escape from politics for the next few days (Although I intend to try; trying to write about this thing all week long sounds almost as depressing as trying to attend it). Every night, you’ll see Obama hoping for change… which admittedly sounds more attractive than next week’s GOP convention, where we’ll get a week of McCain hoping someone will change him before the stain shows up on camera.

Even this week, you can’t escape the old bastard; he was on Leno last night, trying to mitigate the whole “I don’t know how many houses I have” mess by, surprise! reminding us that he was a POW in Vietnam:

I spent 5 1/2 years in a prison cell without — I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table. I didn’t have a chair.

Now that was smart politics; he said just enough. Then again, if he gets more desperate over the issue, he might start talking about how he also didn’t have a house during the Great Depression, while he fought in the Civil War, and that his first house was blown apart by flaming arrows during the Battle of Hastings.

What frightens me is that, based on his age and military background, my girl might actually vote for McCain… only because she might be able to convince him to invade Skidmore. It should be easy, just tell him that it’s a Charlie hideout.

[tags]Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, John McCain, dark humor, satire, political humor[/tags]