Obamania or, in Hebrew, Obamagan

I spent Saturday afternoon with 750,000 of my closest friends. We sat in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in the same setting as Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech", Marian Anderson in 1939, and Forrest Gump's "That's all there is to say about that" speech.

We got there at 9:00 a.m. and, after sitting in the freezing temperature for seven hours, left the Mall feeling great — about life and out country's direction.

Here is what we could see from our spot, which was actually very good. We were about 80% of the way up the reflection pond.



I'm sure you all watched the concert on TV, so I won't go into the details of every speaker. The consensus top performances from the afternoon were Bruce Springsteen, Herbie Hancock, Will.I.Am, Sheryl Crow, and James Taylor. The consensus worst was Tiger Woods.

Preview

At about 10:30 a.m., several of the performers came on stage for a practice run. The top performers of this part were the national anthem performer who went through the song six times (there was a lot of confusion over whether to stand up every time or just realize he was practicing) and Tom Hanks.

Hanks was standing at the podium for a long time, apparently trying to pick up the cues for his montage. But the sound kept going in and out while he was up there, which had everybody joking about his scene from Forrest Gump. There were also several people joking about running on the frozen reflection pool, playing the role of Jenny. Disappointingly, nobody did.

Jack Black also appeared on stage during the dry run, but nobody really heard him.


I came prepared for seven hours in the cold

Now, I forgot to bring a book, a deck of cards, or anything to keep me entertained throughout the day. Luckily, I brought these.



Riot?

Five minutes before the HBO broadcast started, someone stood at the podium and started to speak. But the issue was nobody could hear. The jumbotrons showed somebody speaking at the podium, but the sound was off. This was the case throughout the sound check as well.

This evoked chants of "turn it up," "we can't hear," and "there's no sound." Luckily, the speakers turned on once the HBO broadcast started. If this quiet continued throughout the concert, there would have been a massive riot.

The organizers could have corrected this problem a few ways. One would have been to turn on the sound. The other would have been to turn off the monitors because we were so far away from the stage we would not have known someone was speaking unless he appeared on the big screen.


Men in Trees

Put a few hundred thousand Obama supporters in an open field for three hours and you know a few of them will resort to their hippie tendencies. The loudest cheers throughout the pre-concert festivities were when people climbed up the trees that line the reflection pond.

It took about six hours for the first beach balls to appear. C'mon, people.

This feels very familiar

Walking through downtown D.C. after the concert the the entire crowd heading in the same direction felt very similar to the feeling of walking down Hoover Street after a big Michigan win. And everybody was feeling that good after the concert, too.