Sensory Overload

* Quote of the weekend: "Let's all get up and exercise out lower extremities."-State chairman Art Torres.
* The Kucinich hootenanny wrapped up in just an hour on Friday night. We've been to some hootenannies, we've worked at hootenannies, and, Mr. Kucinich, that was no hootenanny.
* The Guerilla Media workshop on Friday lasted half an hour and consisted of Dems complaining that Harry Reid had been misquoted when he said we lost the war. Good thing they had a workshop.
* The Gore-Obama ticket pushed by some dreamers on Friday sounds good to us, but who's the top and who's the bottom?
* City Councilmember Toni Atkins was a delegate this year. She attended a "small breakfast in La Jolla"with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Atkins said Pelosi told a story about admonishing the president to his face for suggesting "that the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives ‘just stay at home' in his comments about her trip to Syria.”
* The Progressive Democrats of America offered impeach-mints to passers-by.
* Does Dennis Kucinich remind anyone else of Mr. Sulu?
* The photos in the Union-Tribune on Sunday of the presidential candidates said something about the paper's politics. An Obama photo used a technique that disfigured his face, and Clinton's photo showed her clutching a supporter as if to say, as one observer put it, "Come closer my pretty, so I can drink your blooood!"But the photo of Kucinich peering over the podium like a sneaky little gnome was hilarious.
* Art Torres capped his opening remarks to the press by saying, "I'm just happy to be alive,"a reference to his March 2006 cancer surgery, which left him unable to chair the state convention that year (Willie Brown did the honors). Torres then implored all men older than 50 to have colonoscopies.
* Two supporters of John Edwards were admonished for using the press riser as a platform for painting signs. After they packed up their paints, a youthful convention staffer noticed a small splotch of green paint on the riser that was subsequently examined by no less than three more workers. Fortunately, it was water-based and cleaned up lickety-split.
* The Edwards campaign gets the award for the most arrogant theme song. After his speech, Edwards was played off with Foo Fighters singing, "There goes my hero. / Watch him as he goes.”
* The Lyndon LaRouchians were out in force, but mainly they demonstrated why we need to put more money into our schools. One told CityBeat that "Abe Lincoln kicked the British ass in the civil War."Another argued that folk music is based on rock 'n' roll.
* Gov. Bill Richardson, in his press conference, made the gaffe of the weekend, one-upping the LaRouchians by telling reporters that Byron White's U.S. Supreme Court stint didn't last past the '60s. White retired in 1993.
* Democrats have bad hair, but the balding guy with the mullet really took the cake. The business in front closed, and the party in back should have ended long ago.
* The convention crowd on Saturday wouldn't let Congresswoman Maxine Waters leave after her speech without coming back for an encore. She returned to the podium and shouted, "Not another nickel. Not another dime. Not another soldier. Not this time!”
* There's never enough free food, but the shortage of free forks at the Friday reception was baffling. Luckily, neither Dems nor CityBeat reporters are above eating hummus with their fingers.
* CityBeat figured out why the convention came to San Diego: Audits were a key topic at every caucus and meeting. San Diegans jumped in to lend their expertise.
* This guy at the Progressive Caucus held above his head a sign that read "What is depleted uranium?"for, like, an hour. Talk about a feat of stamina. We were impressed.