Sunday: Convention opens, closes
August 31st, 2008 – 3:25 PM by James LileksWelcome to the 2008 Hurricane Gustav Convention. This might be the first convention in meteorological history that was interrupted by a political event, but right now it looks as if the two will compete for the rest of the week. John McCain, who everyone had expected to appear Thursday night on the levees and fill sandbags, may actually show up at the Xcel in Minneapolis - what? Oh, sorry, right – the Xcel in St. Paul, whatever, but if it’s important to you then we’ll say “St. Paul” when we remember. Can’t promise anything, though. We’re the MEDIA. Have you thought of just putting it all in one city? Anyway, it looks bad, and we’ll be standing by. Gustav is expected to make landfall in St. Paul on Tuesday evening -
BREAKING: we finally have some news at the convention, and the news is that there will be no convention tomorrow. Not much of one, anyway. Most events will be cancelled, McCain said. They will call the convention to order, adopt the rules, elect officers and adopt the platform – and then call it quits two and a half hours later. This means there will be hundreds of news-starved journalists roaming St. Paul in a blind red fury; deprived of even the meanest ration of gruelly news, there is now a level of non-newsiness here that eclipses anything we experienced in Denver. It’s like Un-news. Anti-news that destroys news on contact. This is like waiting three hours for the band to hit the stage then learning the concert is cancelled.
7 Responses to "Sunday: Convention opens, closes"
While we wait for news, we can re-write the sentence
“This might be the first convention in meteorological history that was interrupted by a political event”
so that it makes sense.
How about
“This might be the first convention in political history that was interrupted by a meteorological event”
Too busy to edit, eh?
If you read it again, I believe you will see that the sentence was written this way intentionally so as to make a humorous point.
James
There’s a money making opportunity here for you.
Hire one of those tour buses, do you have the London open toppers there in Minneapolis, load up a batch of your fellow journalist and play tour guide. Call it $20.00 a head and you can afford car washes all long and cold winter.
Best part, end up at the Fair for a delightful dinner feast of food on a stick.
Wally, I hate to break it to you, but your sense of humor is broken.
You may be right, but I really don’t think so. Strip it down - “convention…that was interrupted by a political event”. Not funny, just a non sequiter. I’d bet anything it was unintentional.
Wally Ballou says:
“…I’d bet anything it was unintentional.”
Anything? I could really use a new car. What are you driving these days?
As I’ve been saying all along, the Twin Cities has branding issues. The name “Minneapolis/St. Paul” confuses outsiders, who don’t know who we are or where we are anyway. The name Minneapolis has the best chance at recognition, so we should just go with “Minneapolis” and consider St. Paul a suburb from now on. I think our only hope otherwise is that maybe the idea of the “Twin” Cities is famous enough to pull us through. At any rate, that’s why I’m not surprised journalists keep saying Minneapolis instead of St. Paul. We’ve got enough problems without a confusing name for our metro area.