I spent most of today bitching about President Obama.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I mostly love the dude. He’s done a reasonably heroic job fishing America’s lifeless body out of an economic dumpster. And this whole gay marriage stance is pretty nervy in an election cycle. The guy’s got nads.
But every time he visits our fair city, my 90-minute roundtrip commute becomes four hours, as the police -and whatever secret service agents are not currently busy talking hookers down on price – close every thoroughfare within, it seems, a 30-mile radius of the President’s motorcade. Sure, I’d like to eat Peking duck and artichoke salad with George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Tobey Maguire, too, but not if it means 5 million people have to spend two extra hours wishing the guy selling oranges on the overpass was selling guns.
So I spent a lot of time bad mouthing the leader of the free world today. And then I read that, along the canyon roads that the he took to Clooney’s house, families gathered to cheer the motorcade.
And children manned a lemonade stand with a sign that said, “Presidents drink free”.
At another corner, a boy held up another hand-drawn sign that said, “Will trade Lakers for Bulls if you stop”.
And finally, two guys and two children stood at the end of their driveway with what may be the best sign of all:
“Our gay family thanks Mr. President.”
Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much. Any event that brings out that kind of togetherness and sense of community without planes being flown into buildings is probably worth those two extra hours in the car.
But next time, I’ll wear an adult diaper. ‘Cause once you pee into a coffee mug, you kinda don’t want to use it again.