Boom Shocka Locka

Denver: Day 2, Tha Speech

Andrew and I woke up early on Thursday to head to the hotel to get our special seating credentials for the speech that night just to make sure everything was squared away. The guy giving us the credentials told us our seats would be “amazing”. How amazing you ask? “You will be ten feet from the Senator, no joke.” Jaws dropped.

Since we were told that showing up by 2 or 3 would be fine and we wouldn’t need to get in line too early, we headed to see Manifest Destiny, an art gallery of Obama-inspired shia. It was wonderful and creepy all at the same time. The free stuff we picked up was definitely a highlight including huge posters of the Obey HOPE design.

We then made our way to the lightrail, passing Ben Gibbard and Nick Harmer of Death Cab in deep conversation along the way.

After waiting for the lightrail for nearly a half hour we got on and arrived at INVESCO Field only to see the line was longer than I had hoped to walk to the stadium, let alone stand in line. Luckily, it didn’t take as long as it would have seemed and we got in after two hours or so (okay, so yeah, still sucked).

Once inside, we walked to where we would be led to our seats. We were taken down inside the stadium and lead out onto the floor, past some delegates, more delegates, and even more until we reached the inner circle directly surrounding the stage. OMGZ does not even begin to describe it. Like seriously, only ten people in the world had a better seat than us for the night. Andrew and I were told to hang tight bc ABC News wanted to interview us? Wha? Well, it ended up being a mix-up as they thought we had won the contest to go backstage with Barack. My hair was looking so good too…

After taking in our ridiculous view we wandered around the floor, talking to RT Rybak and Keith Ellison about their speaking rolls at the SFBO campus kickoff on the 8th and reveling in how awesome we were. Looking at the names on the seats around us, we found out that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would be sitting within an arm’s reach, I’m sure they were honored.

The day was star-studded to be sure. Backstage we saw Jamie Foxx, Ohio Gov Ted Strickland, San Fran Mayor Gavin Newsom (who introduced Cold War Kids onstage the night before), and other politicos and media peeps. Throughout the night we were right up front to see Al Gore, Howard Dea, Bill Richardson and more speak, will.i.am and John Legend perform “Yes We Can”, and were sitting in the same area as Ann Curry, Michelle Obama + kids and the Bidens. During the short bio video that was shown immediately before Barack’s speech I was able to catch Michelle laughing as the video showed her saying how she had thought she would never date Barack and Sasha and Malia get super pumped when they were shown in the vid on the big screen.

The speech of course, was unreal. Being able to be that close and with the atmosphere in the stadium was completely unbelievable. Not only that, but Barack’s speech was probably the best I have heard him give; he was very specific on policy and laid into McCain.

Afterwards, a staffer we had gotten to know asked what we thought of an image on a Blackberry as it may be a new logo for the campaign. It was the word “AMERICAN” with “AMERI” in blue and “CAN” in red. I told him I loved it because of its emphasis on patriotism and the continuation of positive messaging in the campaign. You heard it here first kids.

After walking a few miles back to our car, we got changed for will.i.am’s after party. Of course, when we got to the door, I was wearing my asics and had to run back to the car to get my boat shoes as there was a no tennis shoe policy. We finally got in and yet again wondered how we were able to do all of the ridiculous stuff we did on the trip so far. They announced the “show” would be starting soon (they didn’t say exactly who would be playing) so we inched close to the stage in our curiosity. To our glee, the entirety of the Black Eyed Peas (yes, even Fergie Ferg) came on stage and played through an Obama/progressive themed freestyle set and topped it off with the crowd pleasers of “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Pump It”, “Let’s Get It Started”, and “Where Is The Love” with John Legend playing a couple of songs in between. If you are to take anything from this paragraph it is this; Ferg shook her booty like ten feet from me. Holla back y’all.

We made it back to the hotel at around three in the morning after one of the most insane days of my life.