John_Schwada's Blog

Getting geared up for the convention....Saturday producer Bob "Sleeping Volcano" Tarlau (more about the nickname later), photog Darrell Kim and I fly into Denver, for the Democratic confab, arriving at 4 in the afternoon after wrestling with large quantities of gear.

My brain? I’m leaving it behind. Unnecessary baggage. You don’t need a brain to cover a convention, you just follow the hordes of reporters clamoring for the latest, newest, weirdest. Rule number 1, don’t fall down in a crowd of stampeding reporters and cameramen. Mostly what you need to cover a convention is stamina, plenty of coffee, a working internet connection, five hours of sleep and a sense of humor that will carry you through the darkest moments of exhaustion, frustration and tedium. Forget about God helping you out. He’s not at any of these conventions, Democrat or Republican. He’s got better things to do - like watching the latest Woody Allen movie.

Of course, we’re looking forward to our convention adventure. Nothing can be better than having to go through a half-dozen security checks per hour, losing one’s cellphone in the clutter of electronic equipment on a desk built for kindergarten students...sweating through several shirts in one day, getting electronic feedback from your IFB connection during a live-shot (that feedback is the maddening sound of your own voice echoing in your ear, after about a 1/5th of a second delay)...

Better yet!!! How about watching the miracle of birth and evolution. Yes, it's true. I have witnessed - amid the pre-creation Chaos of a reporter’s convention workspace - small slimy things crawl out of swampy cups of coffee and plates of half-eaten pasta, sprout air-breathing lungs and walk on four legs upon floors littered with old newspapers...Did they evolve into delegates, lobbyists – reporters? Who knows.

But don’t get me wrong - nothing beats covering a news conference where the sitting president’s aides have to respond to reports that a top adviser is separating from the campaign because he’s been caught consorting with a prostitute (Dems, Chicago, 1996). Hmmmm....maybe we’ll pass on that example. Forget it.

Or how about hanging out at a secret training camp in Malibu where militant convention protesters were practicing their hell-raising tactics (Dems, Los Angeles, 2000), including  rappelling down the sides of buildings to hang illegal banners, while inhaling sizeable quantities of ganja? Watching a guy in a Che Guevera t-shirt try to climb a rope on dope is memorable.

Or getting my hair singed because I was too close when Al and Tipper Gore, as millions watched, locked lips in that famous, staged kiss that was a prelude to the nominee’s "class warfare" acceptance speech (Dems, Los Angeles, 2000). Hot romance and hot rhetoric – all on one stage!!

Or what about the entire Democratic political establishment, including Bill and Hillary, doing the macarena amid a cloud of balloons (does anyone remember how to do the macarena?) as the closing act of a convention (Dems, Chicago, 1996). Little did we know at the time that this hip-grinding frivolity would be a last hurrah of fun for Bill Clinton who was about to face several years of painful exposes.

Or what about being cursed for being part of the Fox news family while covering a huge parade of leftists, anti-war protesters, labor unionists and members of CodePink (GOP, New York, 2004). Burning question: will Medea "Ms. CodePink" Benjamin be arrested somewhere, somehow at the Dems convention in Denver?

Or how about the entertaining "shadow convention" where organizer Arianna Huffington presided, as the queen of parody, with help from Al "Minnesota Funnybone" Franken (GOP, Philadelphia, 2000)? Asked whether the founding fathers would’ve recognized the GOP convention as a good sign of our nation’s political health, Huffington told me: "(Thomas) Jefferson - he wouldn't have set foot at the other convention. He said we needed a rebellion every twenty years, right?"

Just to wrap up: Bob Tarlau, producer-extraordinaire, has earned the nickname "Sleeping Volcano" for his antics during the 2008 New Hampshire primary. Bob is a man of exceptional good manners and even-tempered....but during the hectic days of the primary, Bob’s personal printer began doing strange and unpredictable things. Suddenly, after a half-hour or so of fussing with the monster, Bob finally stood up, screamed a few expletives, snatched the printer by the short-hair and slam-dunked it into a garbage bin.

This convention Darrell "Photog" Kim and I will be keeping a foul-weather eye on Bob. If he starts to bubble at the mouth, spouting lava and curses, we’ll try to appease him with platters of virgin cold-cuts from the Fox News commissary. More congealed mayo, Bob?