The problem with using your cell phone as your alarm clock is that if you forget to make the ringtone and the alarm tone different, sometimes you sleep right through the damn thing through some sort of desensitization effect. Thus it was that I woke up too late to hear Nancy Pelosi and some other dude so when I got to the cab I decided to go ahead and wander on over to the Renaissance Hotel and see what was what.
When I told the driver my destination, I got my first validation of the day when the driver asked me “So, are you one of those Republicans that are hopping mad all over up there?” I confided in him that I was, in fact, undercover and that his refusal to assume I was a dirty fucking hippie was a good sign for my day’s wardrobe choice. He mentioned that cab drivers get some sort of circular several months ahead of time which alert them to major and some minor events, so he know what Netroots Nation was. I asked him when he’d gotten the circular announcing and Defending the American Dream Summit, and he responded that the first time he’d heard of it was when there was a small writeup in the local paper about it. (Thus lending some credence to my Technorati-powered theory that this Summit was essentially conceived and executed in a three-week period.)
My hope in approaching this event was to get to see Michelle Malkin speak at lunch; despite having
watched her writing for over a year I’d never got a chance to hear her in person. That said, I didn’t really want to register for the event, since that would involve a) writing down my real name in conjunction with a wingnut event and b) giving them money.