Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of President Obama’s Inaugural Balls. I fully intended to go, but there was work, and financial considerations, and the small fact that only an insane person would invite me to an event where I had to wear something called a “monkey suit”… at least not in a place where liquor is served and port-a-potty coverage is spotty at best. Eventually someone would have said, “This is some fling, huh?” and I would have connected the dots. The unholy dots.
I did consider trying to get into one, if only for the story, but those invitations are a bitch to get a hold of. Supposedly you could get one if you contributed enough money to Obama’s campaign, but frankly the idea never occurred to me; any money I would have given to the Obama campaign would’ve been used to publicly call McCain and Palin dangerous, drooling spastics, and being a good American in a shitty economy, I don’t believe in outsourcing. Besides, let me say again: shitty economy. Between pay cuts and inflation, I’m reduced to making my own Coke like some kind of frontier wino. If I had the money to pay someone to lie to me and tell me what I want to hear, I’d open the phone book to “escort services” and get a blowjob out of the deal.
(Actually, considering the sex industry’s recession-proof, these day’s I’d be lucky if my disposable income bought me a dutch rudder… and having just checked my bank balance, I’d have to scrimp to afford a “Squirt It With A Water Pistol While Giggling Derisively,” which to the best of my knowledge has no entry in the Urban Dictionary. Maybe I should make one: “Super Soaker”? Nah; too pedestrian. “Hosing the hose”? Too precious and obvious. “Hosing Squared”? Nope; sounds like something that happens to geeks in a junior high locker room. Fuck it; I digress…)
Supposedly I could have gotten an invitation by calling my Representative and telling him all the things I’ve done to help my community. Which is a course of action that I considered, so I sat down to list all the positive things I’ve done in the community… and a course of action I ultimately discarded when I realized that I wasn’t suffering from writer’s block; this really was the entire list:
- Peed on winos to try to convince them that the grass might just be greener on the Cambridge side of the fence.
- Didn’t burn anything all the way down.
- Saved water by peeing on winos.
Then it occurred to me that I had an iron-clad way to get an invitation: believe it or not, I actually know a guy who’s a Secret Service agent on the Presidential Detail! The guy could just go talk to the President and ask him to peel off an invitation for me! I mentioned this to my girl, who said: “You’re out of your fucking mind. Do you think that your buddy would admit, to the President of the United States, that he knows you? Smart people who know what’s good for them don’t admit knowing you to a fucking mall cop. And even if he would admit that he knew you, do you think you’d pass the background check? Christ almighty, you can’t even pass a Goddamned Google search. They might give you the invitation, but the odds are even that they’d haul you off the plane with a burlap sack over your head and use you to train the new guys how to use their extensible whipping batons.”
She had a point.
Still, I was tempted to see if I could get in. Not out of any sense of history or pride or even shadenfreude over seeing the Texas Dingbat skulking out of Dodge a half-step ahead of the subpoena posse. I figured there were some pretty positive pros to being at one of these deals:
- There’s a pretty good chance I might bump into the President sneaking out for a cigarette, and if I could talk comics with him, it might open a lot of doors at Comic-Con… preferably a door to a private bathroom that gay furries aren’t banging in.
- He’s new enough at his job that I might be able to convince him that the price to bum a Marlboro Light is a Presidential Pardon that’s been signed but not dated.
Of course, there was also one significant con:
- Everything I do every day between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. becomes a class 3 felony if you do it with 100 yards of the President of the United States.
But then I did a little research, and found out that a) it cost like, $2,000 bucks just to get in the door at one of these things, and b) I was too old to get into the Youth Ball, where all the good music and experienced drinkers would be. Which meant that I would be stuck somewhere listening to ballroom music, drinking $12 champagne and watching fat, right campaign contributors get tipsy and grope each other like fifteen-year-olds listening to Night Ranger, and not only can you not unsee shit like that, I could only think of one way to make that a good story, and it wasn’t worth the cost.
And in the end, that story happened without my having to be there… which is proof why you need to pick your candidates carefully. So thank you, my own Senator Kennedy, for saving me $2,000 on tickets, $240 on champagne, and most importantly: $16 bucks on a portable strobe light.
[tags]Barack Obama, presidential inauguration, inaugural ball, Ted Kennedy, dark humor, satire[/tags]
