I'm with Reasonable ------->

Saturday was a very exciting day. First of all, it was my dad's fiftieth birthday, or in his words, his 25th birthday times 2. I didn't get to spend it with him, which kills me, so I spent it doing all sorts of distracting things. The most nationally important of which being the joint Rally to Restore Sanity and to March Keep Fear Alive.

Can I just point out first of all that we're idiots because we live within walking distance of the Mall--we don't even have to take the metro--and we still didn't make it until exactly noon. Needless to say, by that point, it was challenging to find a place to stand as over 200,000 people had already shown up. But luckily we live behind the capitol so we were already at the front of the crowd when we showed up.

So. What the hell was the Rally to Restore Sanity? Based on the fact that it was mostly just a very long outdoor version of the Daily Show, I think it's main purpose was just to prove that there are more Liberals and just plain "normal" people than Glen Beck would like the world to believe, and that we outnumber the crazy-shouters by far. (That's right, I refuse to believe it's normal to be that angry all the time at everything.)

I know the first picture here does not quite convey the scale of this post-rally horde unleashing itself directly upon the city, but it stretches six blocks: from Constitution Ave. all the way to Chinatown, shoulder to shoulder. I've really never seen anything like it except for the inauguration, which was much colder and more somber (and did I mention colder?).

The Highlights:

1. Cat Stevens. The minute John Stewart introduced him, I started crying. I never thought I would hear him perform live. And to be honest, I never expected to have to boo Stephen Colbert for ruining my hippie-Cat-Stevens-Peace-train-euphoria, but I was quite displeased by the sudden interruption of Ozzy Osborn (as much as I love him, he's no Yusuf Islam).

2. John Stewart's speech. It just makes me feel better knowing that at least one person in the media, even if he is a pseudo-comic pundit Comedy Central guy, feels the same way I do and has the power and balls to say so in front of the world. Even if the major news media don't bat an eye.

3. The guys from Myth Busters. Hear me out. 50% of their shtick was a failure, but it was sort of brilliant of them to try to conduct experiments with a crowd that big while they had them. Doing the wave with 200,000 people? That's kind of awesome. And then making them all jump at once to see if it registers on a seismometer? Even if it didn't work, it was neat (neat!) to hear that THUMP, and well, to see everyone cooperating (awwwwww).

4. The signs. People are so creative. Love it.

The lowlights:

1. Jeff Tweedy. No problem with Mavis Staples, but damn Jeff, way to bring everyone the hell down. Terrible. I actually preferred Kid Rock. Kid. Rock.

2. Not being able to see anything but people's heads--anywhere in the city. (And the guy in front of me smelled like he drank a bottle of vodka and then sweat it all out on his sweatshirt.) Amazingly, one of the drawbacks of "strength in numbers" is, as Sarte said that "hell is other people" (or at least it can be). That sounds awful, but consider this: Amazing three hour rally begins at 12 and ends at 3, many people arrive as early as 8:00 a.m. There are very few places to get food on the Mall, so what do these 200,000 people immediately do after the rally? They flood the restaurants. Tim and I went to our "secret" Chinese restaurant, which is usually empty, and the poor place was overwhelmed. It's usually so empty they don't even have a waiter--the host seats you, takes your order, brings your drink. The busboy brings your food. The host's wife brings your check. Now the dining room was full and the chef took our order 45 minutes after we sat down. The line was out the door.

But I have to say, I have never tasted such amazing sushi in my life. I will call it freedom sushi. After the rally and the awesomeness of being around people who just want everyone to be polite... we too were hungry and tired. And happy and hopeful. (But mostly hungry and tired--which is, I think, the point? When you're living you're own life, you're too busy doing that to be too insulted by how other people are living theirs.)