(Please Note: I am working on a much larger piece for my magazine Verge of LA. This is just a sketch of the setup/intro that I'm throwing on my goofy blog. Nobody panic. At least not yet!)
We live in a crazy world. Most of us know it. We know there is a Hell on Earth, but we don't really know it. Not like John McCain. We've all gone crazy in our own "room." Usually the door is unlocked or we have the key to let ourselves out. John McCain also went crazy in his "room," but he couldn't just open the door and walk away. All he had to cling to was his religion, his country and mostly his fellow captives.
John McCain has seen the Gates of Hell. He has been broken, he's been humiliated, he survived.
Barack Obama is tripper too. I like the dude, he seems cool. Obama even went to Occidental College, the hip little liberal arts school right in Eagle Rock near where I used to live. One day I was with Marisol at the funky diner, right near the corner of Eagle Rock and Colorado (I can't think of the name). As a mixed-race couple, we noticed, to our astonishment, that there were at least five other multiracial couples eating at the diner all at the same time. We felt like we belonged.
I can tell you that Barack Obama is one of us. More than you may even know.
When I was at North Hollywood High in mid eighties, I remember my dad telling me about the new sportscaster on "channel 2" (as we used to call CBS here in LA). My dad said that the new guy Keith Olbermann is "too smart and funny for local sports, he needs something bigger." I've always listened to my dad when is come to comedians. Growing up he turned me onto early Woody Allen, Saturday Night Live and David Letterman.
Olbermann has been on my radar for nearly 25 years. He has always been a brilliant comedian to me, I've never thought of him as an actual newscaster. In the last two years he has proven that point to the rest of the world.
