GOP Convention Day 1

Well, I'm down here at Republican convention in St. Paul, residing at a hotel in Bloomington. I figured I'd give you all some first-person perspective about what's going on. I volunteered to work down here, and my job isn't actually at the Excel Energy Center...I'm working at one of the delegate hotels...telling buses when to leave and greeting delegates. The delegations at the hotel I'm working at are the Tennessee and Alaska delegations...not normally that exciting, but with the recent pick by John McCain of Sarah Palin (Governor of Alaska) as his vice presidential running mate, suddenly my job may become much more exciting! Most likely she won't be there, but who knows?

Some exciting events for me today. I started out the day traveling to the Minneapolis Convention Center. I was invited through a contact of mine to go to the World Premier of the movie American Carol, a political parody of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol that makes fun of filmmaker (or should I say documentarian?) Michael Moore, as well as about every other group of people.
Check out the trailer for the movie here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSpu8i1ZEFw&feature=related

Right after checking in to the premier, patriotic singer Lee Greenwood kicked off a pre-show concert, where I was able to enjoy awesome America music, accompanied by free food (and beverages).

As I sat down for the movie, I chatted with the guy next to me. Turns out he is the Minnesota chairman of Young Republicans, and he is also the second cousin of the former superintendent of the high school I graduated from in North Dakota. Small world, huh?

Tomorrow (Monday) they canceled all of the extra fun stuff at the convention so everyone can focus on hurricain Gustav. Political party parties obviously go to the back burner when national emergencies take place, and kudos to everyone in charge who were able to evacuate 2 million people, which is a record evacuation. Proceedings will still take place at the GOP convention on Monday (with the rest TBA as the hurricain developes) as the Republicans have some mandatory things they have to take care of to legally exist as a party. President Bush and VP Cheney are skipping the convention to oversee things down at the Gulf.

I'm working on scoring some guest passes, so I can get an inside scoop from the convention. More to come!