The Next Day (10/29) -
[There really is a point to this saga, I promise, so please bear with.]
Readers familiar with RatBoy - alolm will know that I don't get much time off, and I had made special arrangements for October 29th to have a free overnight to attend a semi-annual party thrown by a lawyer buddy. Last one was in the Cinco de Mayo spring bash, and for that I hadn't been able to negotiate sofa-flopping time, so this one was a real treat. And we were getting returned that hour we lost for Daylight Time (which I always accept as a birthday gift, anyway). Wee hours would be our due, and I had partied with these people, and they are eaters, drinkers, most of all talkers.
Also smart and funny. Bunch of labor lawyers (evenly split between employer/employee business), radio media, bohos, and the likes of me. Costumes were optional (best I could come up with was a bowling shirt with discrete howling/flaming skulls) - our host was in elegant black tattered robes and leather-patched wings (and a matching tail), his wife in spectacular spider-web hose and evil-french-maid's get-up. There was a harlequin with a mane of red hair (touting Green Day's American Idiot, which she had been listening to all the way up from Eugene) The most frightening couple came as Lyndie Englund and her Man-on-a-Leash, complete with loincloth (over a thong) and a keffiya - which would have been truly disturbing if he hadn't been having such fun showing off his good body. There were also Joey Ramone wigs, and two splendidly over-fed and over-loved doggies. And an electric bat suspended and flapping over the cooktop.
But there was nothing particularly madcap about the conversation. Everyone was trying to get their bearings around the Fitz/Libby indictments, what kind of response Dems would make (especially their temperament to make any concerted response at all). Old shit in Left Blogistan, but being able to spend an evening with it, with real warm bodies and hot minds, just reinforced the wonder and confusion from the day before, talking to my old friends.
What none of us knew that Saturday night was that Harry Reid was going to throw the Senate into closed session on the following Tuesday (11/1) to force the issues of distorted intelligence and blocked investigation of those distortions, nor how powerful that can-opener would be. Here was a house well-populated by pretty prosperous, well-connected and serious minded men and women, and (heads up, Sen. Wyden, Rep Wu, etc.!) feeling adrift. My friends Jeff and Susan went out of their way to tell me how much they admire Gavin Newsome, and they only live close to SF - he still bears their standard.
They act on it, too - but that's the Next Part.
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