My Brush With Kos, and the Golden Ticket

Winning by analogy--

I just got a golden ticket. Literally.

Here in the Big Tent, Kos of Daily Kos stood up and waved two delicious Thursday night lilac colored passes edged with gold gilt: Hall press passes to tonight's Barack Obama acceptance speech. (Hall press passes are the inner sanctum, baby. As close as press is allowed.)

Now, you may know that 10 of us MOMocrats are here. Through the insane grifter skills of our fearless leaders and O.G. MOMos CityMama (shout-out to you and AT&T for the cell phones, girl!) and Glennia (The Silent I), we managed to get 9 passes for our DNC-attending crew for this magical night. We worried and fretted about how to get that last pass, begging and pleading and importuning to anyone who looked like they could possibly help us.

No luck.

Some unfortunate MOMo was going to have to take one for the team. Definitely an uncomfortable, unhappy proposition.

So when Kos suddenly stood up and waved the two Hall press passes around--the Golden Tickets--Julie P. and I leaped up and joined the crowd around Kos. He debated about how to distribute them. What would be fair?

He said, "How about what state you're from?"

We all started blurting out our state affiliations.

When I said California, he said, "Oh, you're out. I'm from California too, and it's no big deal." My heart sank. I knew he meant that CA is already blue and in the bag for Obama, so we get no special consideration.

A person standing next to him suggested: the person who comes up with the best analogy should win a ticket. "Obama is to McCain as blank is to blank."

We were all in the running again. I came back because the rules had changed in favor of my English Lit PhD supa-powers.

We all stumbled and fumbled for the winning analogy.

A few people volunteered this or that.

From Kos' expression, I could see no one was hitting paydirt. He looked around and made eye contact.

"What have you got?"

"Come back to me. Give me a minute." My mind raced. I was starting to panic. Wait too long and someone else would win the tickets.

A few more people volunteered analogies.

Then it came to me.

I raised my hand and waved it like an impatient third grader, taking a deep breath so I could get this right in front of a small crowd of people. I squeezed the words out.

"Barack Obama is to John McCain as Jay-Z is to Vanilla Ice."

It just took an instant for Kos to absorb it, and he smiled as other people around me erupted into spontaneous laughter, and he said, "You win, you deserve this ticket."

And I grabbed it and jumped in the air and went SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!, feeling a little bit like poor, overlooked, but very worthy Charlie of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I might've pogo'd around the Big Tent a little bit with joy. I certainly couldn't tell you who won the other pass.

I'll be blogging from the 50-yard line blogger lounge tonight, trying to type and keep from flooding my keyboard with happy tears of joy that our country could do this amazing thing--that we're just halfway to potentially having the most gifted, brilliant, able, dedicated president our country has seen in a long time...just halfway up the hill to nominating, and then electing, Barack Obama president of the United States.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.