My Jon Stewart Rally Wrap-up

     My hair looked awful.

     I didn't run into anyone I knew, or maybe they saw my hair from a distance and turned in the other direction.

     If you look at this image of the crowd I was about 1 inch below and 1.5 inches to the right of the center of the giant grass cross.  I could see small people on the stage if they went most of the way stage left.

     I did not think much of the Roots/John Legend set.  The first song was mediocre.  John Legend was either having a bad day or can't sing well.  One of the songs contained a lot of ignorance with lines like "Everything is made in China now, are we all Chinese?"  America is still the #1 manufacturing nation in the world, and how would we become Chinese from buying their goods?  One of the other songs was about giving hope to ghetto boys, which obviously directly resonated with the urban and suburban, middle class, white audience.

     A pretty neat moment was during the MythBusters wave experiment.  It started at the front and people around me were happy and confused, like me, when 15 seconds later we still didn't see it coming over the horizon.

     I liked a sign that said "Death To Nobody."

     Father Guido Sarducci's benediction was nice.

     I really didn't know about the one, bad call by the umpire which prevented a Yankee ballplayer from pitching a perfect game and while I was impressed by his handling of the situation, I still don't think he should have asked for a bigger strike zone, next time. John Stewart gave him a deserved award.

     Apparently ABC, NBC, the New York Times, NPR and other organizations didn't allow their employees to attend the event because it was political.  Seems odd, to me.  Anyway, Stephen Colbert gave them an award, but since they weren't in attendance, gave it to someone with more courage... a seven year old girl.

     I liked, and will someday listen to again, Stewart's final monologue.

     I liked Tony Bennett's unaccompanied rendition of God Bless, America. It might even have been an extraordinary rendition.

     I talked to a half dozen or more people after who had attended about their experience and of the 6 none could see anything and only 2 (a forensic psychologist and Columbia student who had won the tickets from Oprah) could hear anything (about half or 70%).  It makes me wonder how many people left because they couldn't see or hear anything. It's only important for the crowd estimates.