By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com
There was a longer line at our Magnolia Avenue Starbucks — where voters (actually, anybody who asked) got a free tall cup of coffee — than their was at our Magnolia Avenue voting place on Tuesday afternoon. They were happy to see us at the polls, either because we were one of the few to show up at the previous election or because we had information on the day’s freebie java and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Watching the evening’s coverage, we had just finished discussing MSNBC’s virtual Grecian-inspired room when we switched over to CNN just as Jessica Yellin was being beamed in as a “hologram.” We seem to remember hollering something about “Star Trek.”
Sure, it’s a nifty trick, but it really defeats the purpose — we were so distracted by the image that we paid absolutely no attention to what anyone was saying. And technically, it wasn’t a true hologram; the images only appeared onscreen (will.i.am did it, too, with a skeptical-looking Anderson Cooper), not in the studio. But — aside from the clips of Jay Leno’s takeoff that CNN keeps running over and over — we can’t wait to see it again.
In the meantime, a friend from college was e-mailing pictures (including this one) from Chicago’s Grant Park, where Barack Obama spoke in front of an estimated 70,000 inside the park, with another 130,000 milling around outside. Liz Maxwell wasn’t too terribly far from the stage — but, not being among the taller members of the crowd, all she could see were the Jumbotron screens. Still, she e-mailed later, “I’m so glad I wasn’t just in my living room 15 miles away — I would have regretted it forever!”
What’s really amazing was that it only took 20 minutes to get out of the park; she said the crowd was extremely well-behaved. (We suspect a similar-sized crowd celebrating, say, a Cubs World Series win wouldn’t be quite so polite.)
•Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears joined Madonna during Thursday night’s show at Dodger Stadium. Not at the same time, of course — Spears came out for “Human Nature” early in the night, and Timberlake joined Madge for “4 Minutes” near the end of the show.
•Deftones bassist Chi Cheng is in a coma after a car accident in Santa Clara on Monday. Cheng’s mother has asked the band to ’spread a bit of good in his name,’ so on the band’s web site, singer Chino Moreno passed along her reminder to buckle up; on Friday, drummer Abe Cunningham asked people to call someone you love and tell them so. For updates, click here.
•Jimmy Carl Black, drummer for Frank Zappa’s the Mothers of Invention, died Nov. 1 of cancer. He was 70.
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– photo by Curt Silvers
Friday, November 7, 2008
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