-Watching Bush’s helicopter take off. My friend and I ran to my apartment roof as the chopper lifted off the ground, and sure enough, there it was buzzing along the skyline. She snapped the attached picture.
-Seeing Cheney in that #$# wheelchair.
-Hearing endless analysis about that flubbed oath.
-Listening to Rick Warren for the first time and having my (admittedly not incredibly refined) Gaydar totally set off. Is this why he’s so #$# homophobic?
-Listening to Obama’s speech. It felt like it was probably shopped around too many editors to really strike home with any chisel-it-in-marble-prose, but it wasn’t just the bunch of platitudes that most inaugural addresses are, and was easily good enough to encompass the national dilemma(s) and point the way forward. Best line was probably the bit about “we reject as false that we have to choose between our ideals and our safety.”
-Listening to the last words of the Benediction. Fuck, did Lowery OWN that podium.
-Watching the parade. Speaking on CNN, David Gergen said he breathed a sigh of relief when Obama stepped back inside the mega-limo after walking part of the way down Pennsylvania Avenue. So did I.