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Clinton (continued)
Jul. 2nd, 2004 08:10 amCouple wandered into the store last night just around closing. Silicon Valley expats relocated to Mexico. When the bubble burst and they were down to their last $40,000, they took the dough and bought some acreage on the Yucatan peninsula where they’ve set up a trailer park. Eventually, as the itinerant population ages, they hope to turn it into an assisted living situation. We chatted about the learning curve for close to an hour. I kept glancing at my watch. He kept saying, "They don’t teach you that in business school." Mexico, he tells me, is caught some place between the typewriter and the computer. The bureaucracy doesn’t go out of its way to make things hard for Americans; it goes out of its way to make things hard for everyone.
They loved the store. The woman kept exclaiming, "This place is so magical!" But they didn’t buy anything.
The moon was hidden behind a bank of low-crouching fog but four lampera were anchored very close to shore, their banks of green fluorescent lights ablaze. The lights attract the squid; the squid attract the fishermen who sell them to the local Cannery Row restaurants where they’re breaded and fried and hawked to tourists. A perfect little ecology. Symbiosis is just supply and demand.
I’m bone-weary even after ten hours sleep. The last two weeks took a lot out of me. This is what middle age means – you can’t rebound.
So, anyway – Clinton.
It’s amazing how tacky expensive hotels really are up close. Their operational budgets are relatively small. Marketing is the big ticket item. Their bread and butter clientele, after all, are not the fabulously wealthy but working stiffs on vacation lured there by fantasies of Victorian country houses. The Fairmont’s carpeting has no nap; its décor is all wafting white drapery and variations on fraying fleur de lys.
In between circulating among the rich and anxious, I played reconnaissance with Clinton’s advance team and the Secret Service. I think Hillary must hire the lackeys: the two I met were blunt-featured, short-haired women in sensible shoes whom I imagine either slept together or alone with their cats. They must get to see a lot of rich drunks waiting for the Big Guy; they cast a caustic, practiced eye on the scene, their cell phones glued to their ears for up-to-the-minute reports. Now he’s in the bathroom. Now he’s on the phone. Now he’s eating.
The Secret Service guys looked cuddly and incompetent. I kept wondering whether that wasn’t part of Dubya’s elaborate revenge on his predecessor, a theory that was put to test when the Big Guy finally arrived. "You have to stand with your backs to him when he comes into the room," the buffer of the two advance team ladies told me. "Otherwise he’ll think he has to talk to you."
So I did. XXX told the story in the hotel bar afterwards – walking into the building, Clinton was accosted by a wild-eyed, disheveled looking man, an Afghani, who grabbed the ex-prez’s hands and would not let go. The Secret Service guys stood around looking alarmed. Fortunately one of XXX’s karate students was on hand. She stepped up to the plate, delivered a double-fisted upward punch to the Afghani guy’s clasped hands thus freeing Clinton to walk upstairs.
Kind of fun walking around the Pavilion Room and telling refugees from Leah Garchick’s column to line up single-file as though they were preschoolers waiting on their Saltine snack.
Then afterwards XXX beckoned to us from the dais and it was our turn for five seconds of Best Friendship and a group photo.
"Sir, you can take your time with this photograph," Clinton drawled to the photographer. "This is the kind of photo op I enjoy."
Did I mention all the helpers were girls?
Anyway, I went cheek to cheek with the ex-prez. Will post the evidence when they mail me a copy even if I look really hideous.
After that it was on to the Grand Ballroom. Clinton got the rock star welcome – a thousand people on their feet cheering themselves hoarse. Too bad about that twenty-second amendment. [Beautiful Actress], blitheringly drunk by this point, managed to wrest the introduction away from its designated officiary. She was not scripted. She rambled. She was not terribly articulate. "And I want to thank XXX who’s married to the mayor – whoops! I guess she’s not the mayor anymore, huh? I guess now she’s the Senator! But wouldn’t it be funny if XXX was married to the Mayor? Then I guess we’d know why Gavin is so big on gay marriage!"
"Don’t you fret none, [Beautiful Actress]," Clinton said when he finally took the stage. "I’ve embarrassed myself much worse in front of much bigger crowds and I’m still selling books."
He proceeded to give a forty minute speech based on one page of talking points that XXX had faxed his office less than seventy-two hours before. The guy is just fucking brilliant. A great orator. Not a teleprompter in sight. This is the real thing, I thought to myself, shooting excited grins to XXX and XXX across the table. This is history.
They loved the store. The woman kept exclaiming, "This place is so magical!" But they didn’t buy anything.
The moon was hidden behind a bank of low-crouching fog but four lampera were anchored very close to shore, their banks of green fluorescent lights ablaze. The lights attract the squid; the squid attract the fishermen who sell them to the local Cannery Row restaurants where they’re breaded and fried and hawked to tourists. A perfect little ecology. Symbiosis is just supply and demand.
I’m bone-weary even after ten hours sleep. The last two weeks took a lot out of me. This is what middle age means – you can’t rebound.
So, anyway – Clinton.
It’s amazing how tacky expensive hotels really are up close. Their operational budgets are relatively small. Marketing is the big ticket item. Their bread and butter clientele, after all, are not the fabulously wealthy but working stiffs on vacation lured there by fantasies of Victorian country houses. The Fairmont’s carpeting has no nap; its décor is all wafting white drapery and variations on fraying fleur de lys. In between circulating among the rich and anxious, I played reconnaissance with Clinton’s advance team and the Secret Service. I think Hillary must hire the lackeys: the two I met were blunt-featured, short-haired women in sensible shoes whom I imagine either slept together or alone with their cats. They must get to see a lot of rich drunks waiting for the Big Guy; they cast a caustic, practiced eye on the scene, their cell phones glued to their ears for up-to-the-minute reports. Now he’s in the bathroom. Now he’s on the phone. Now he’s eating.
The Secret Service guys looked cuddly and incompetent. I kept wondering whether that wasn’t part of Dubya’s elaborate revenge on his predecessor, a theory that was put to test when the Big Guy finally arrived. "You have to stand with your backs to him when he comes into the room," the buffer of the two advance team ladies told me. "Otherwise he’ll think he has to talk to you."
So I did. XXX told the story in the hotel bar afterwards – walking into the building, Clinton was accosted by a wild-eyed, disheveled looking man, an Afghani, who grabbed the ex-prez’s hands and would not let go. The Secret Service guys stood around looking alarmed. Fortunately one of XXX’s karate students was on hand. She stepped up to the plate, delivered a double-fisted upward punch to the Afghani guy’s clasped hands thus freeing Clinton to walk upstairs.
Kind of fun walking around the Pavilion Room and telling refugees from Leah Garchick’s column to line up single-file as though they were preschoolers waiting on their Saltine snack.
Then afterwards XXX beckoned to us from the dais and it was our turn for five seconds of Best Friendship and a group photo.
"Sir, you can take your time with this photograph," Clinton drawled to the photographer. "This is the kind of photo op I enjoy."
Did I mention all the helpers were girls?
Anyway, I went cheek to cheek with the ex-prez. Will post the evidence when they mail me a copy even if I look really hideous.
After that it was on to the Grand Ballroom. Clinton got the rock star welcome – a thousand people on their feet cheering themselves hoarse. Too bad about that twenty-second amendment. [Beautiful Actress], blitheringly drunk by this point, managed to wrest the introduction away from its designated officiary. She was not scripted. She rambled. She was not terribly articulate. "And I want to thank XXX who’s married to the mayor – whoops! I guess she’s not the mayor anymore, huh? I guess now she’s the Senator! But wouldn’t it be funny if XXX was married to the Mayor? Then I guess we’d know why Gavin is so big on gay marriage!"
"Don’t you fret none, [Beautiful Actress]," Clinton said when he finally took the stage. "I’ve embarrassed myself much worse in front of much bigger crowds and I’m still selling books."
He proceeded to give a forty minute speech based on one page of talking points that XXX had faxed his office less than seventy-two hours before. The guy is just fucking brilliant. A great orator. Not a teleprompter in sight. This is the real thing, I thought to myself, shooting excited grins to XXX and XXX across the table. This is history.
