Bitch Ph.D.

As long as I continue taking buses and keep my walking around in the horrid heat to a minimum, this is going to be a great week. Otherwise, I may go stabby stabby. I'm currently chilling in the (blissfully airconditioned) lobby of the Denver Art Museum, which is a gorgeous modern steel structure that's like a cross between the Pritzker Pavilion and the Jewish museum in Berlin. Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were designed by the same person who did the Jewish museum, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now.

I came to the Art Museum to see this event, "Politics & the Media: Bridging the Political Divide in the 2008 Election." I'll be blogging about that shortly--it was a great, intellectual discussion between some journalism heavyweights who, unfortunately, can't seem to see the rise of blogging as anything but a threat to the old media establishment. I think there must have been about 7 "writing in your pajamas" jokes (and, admittedly, someone who said "they're not writing in their pajamas, but they're not writing from Baghdad." I think I know someone who would beg to differ). I was the only blogger who asked a question, trying to get Cass Sunstein, who was there and who I admire quite a bit, to acknowledge the benefits of blogging from an intellectual perspective, rather than just from a democratization perspective, which seems to be about the only benefit that these old media dogs will cop to.

But I said I was going to blog about that later. On my short walk from breakfast (okay, it was 1:00 p.m., but it was breakfast food) with Bitch, I walked by the Denver Civic Center, which seems to be the home for all of the counter-culture political action. Observed was a World Can't Wait Booth, signs excoriating Christian "fascists" and a sign (which I lamentably couldn't catch a picture of) that had a picture of an ass, with a picture of Obama pasted on one cheek and a picture of McCain pasted on the other, and the text "TWO SIDES OF THE SAME ARSE." And then I walked up to the amphitheatre, where a dude was talking in front of a giant sign that read "PROCESSION FOR THE FUTURE" just as he was announcing their keynote speaker! Who I thought was going to be that chick who got up in a tree and wouldn't come down for a year--what was her name?--but was in fact...

DARRYL HANNAH! Whoa. She spoke for about two minutes, and advised us to be a "living breathing embodiment of our values" and said we should recognize the "interconnectedness of all life." Next to her was a giant sign that read "INDICT BUSH.GOV CRIMINALS."

Just a few minutes later I figured out what the "procession for the future" was--a series of giant puppets, done up to represent the concepts of Justice, Truth, and Peace. The puppet parade hadn't started yet, so I got to get some shots of them up close. I didn't stay for the parade because I wanted to get over the Art Museum, but I think I'll be hitting the Civic Center lawn again tomorrow to investigate some more. Pictures below.

World Can't Wait operation on the Civic Center lawn: