I'm an idiot.
There I've got that out of the way.
I forgot that I live in a city filled with people of the Democratic persuasion, that if you stopped a hundred people on the street and asked if they were more conservative or liberal, you would get about 86 replies of liberal, ten conservative and the rest unidentified punchs to the face.
The speech was to be @ 12:30PM. I got there at 10:45 AM. I met the nice lady who gave me the piece of paper above. Note:
there will be NO Q and A, which was depressing because I wanted to ask about his relationship to Gore Vidal. (and on a related note ask if he knew if Gore Vidal ever talked to Vidal Sasson.)
Anyway, I was in my running stuff because I figured I would do a lap afterwards so I didn't buy the book. LOTS of people did. I watched for about ten minutes as the clerks brought out a cart loaded with a hundred copies and those were about half gone when I decided to go upstairs and get a seat.
(HA HA HA HA AH)
There were already 500 people seated in a space that normally holds about a hundred. It will be filled next week with fans of John Updike, but nothing, nothing, like this. People were crowding into the standing room sections as I approached. I looked right. I looked left. I looked at my watch.
11:02
Sometimes there are deep eternal questions that one must ask: did I want to stand next to fifty-nine plus people in a space measuring about 4 feet by twelve feet for the next hour and a half and then listen to prepared remarks or did I want to go trotting through the leafy green spaces of Central Park's North Woods?
I sat on this rock after my run.
Joe(I'm not that big an idiot)Nation
