Axis of fedora wrap up- Gonzo journalism sans drugs or booze and the last batch of NH videos and photos

My apolo­gies for the late­ness of this post but after going the full gonzo dur­ing the NH pri­mary (with­out ben­e­fit of alco­hol, drugs or cof­fee) and an utter fail­ure despite my body’s best efforts, to fall asleep at the wheel on the ride home with Stacy McCain at 3 a.m. Wednes­day ‚and the break­ing of assorted speed limit laws while dri­ving Stacy to the air­port I was not phys­i­cally able to stay awake long enough to get this last post up until now.

One aspect of Morn­ing Joe that I didn’t men­tion was not­ing how the live bit reminded me of a stage play with the peo­ple involved rush­ing to get ready dur­ing com­mer­cial breaks

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33865” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Chris Matthews pre­pares for his appear­ance on Morn­ing Joe”][/​caption]

The bit with Willie Geist doing the town hall paid off in terms of prep time

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33866” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Joe Scar­bor­ough speaks with Sen Rick San­to­rum”][/​caption]

The live pub loca­tion also meant the green room was pretty much the Pub bar or the chair before going live.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33867” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Dan Rather pre­pares for his seg­ment”][/​caption]

After Morn­ing Joe was over I went out look­ing for Bar­ni­cle hop­ing to score an inter­view. I couldn’t find up down­stairs so I headed for Radio row fig­ur­ing he might park be grab­bing some interviews.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33868” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“The morn­ing team of Margery Eagan and Jim Braude for 96.9 FM”][/​caption]
It turned out he had not how­ever I was informed that Gov Hunts­man took the oppor­tu­nity to hit Radio Row after Morn­ing Joe. In ret­ro­spect it was a wise move.

At this point I had been up for about 28 hours and I had to find a place to get my posts ready etc I looked for a place to plug-​in but the only plugs I spot­ted untaken were at the top of the stairs head­ing to the radio row. Unfor­tu­nately there was no chair avail­able (the CBS Radio room had extras but when I asked for one I was informed they weren’t allowed to give them out. As I have absolutely no dig­nity when it comes to report­ing I plugged in my PC, took off the sweater I was wear­ing and laid it down on the floor, crossed my legs to and sat down at the top of the stairs on my sweater to do my work.

This actu­ally worked to my advan­tage as those stairs were the pri­mary access point to Radio Row so almost every­one head­ing there had to pass by me…

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33870” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Bret Baier from Fox News Walks by”][/​caption]

…quite a few inter­views took place right in front of me…

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33869” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Debbie Wasser­man Schultz inter­viewed by CBS radio”][/​caption]

…and I could see if any­thing of inter­est hap­pened near the CNN setup downstairs

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33871” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“I’ve seen those two some­where before…”][/​caption]

After I fin­ished writ­ing and sched­ul­ing posts (a slow process as my brain func­tions were slow­ing down con­sid­er­ably I called Stacy McCain who I dropped off at GROK land at approx­i­mately 3:15 a.m. He was up and I offered to come and pick him up, he said he could get a ride here at 2 p.m. and sug­gested that I might con­sider crash­ing some­where. This was in ret­ro­spect a sen­si­ble sug­ges­tion as I was at the 30 hour mark and after a night at the bar meet­ing peo­ple
[cap­tion id=“attachment_33875” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Chris from unreg­u­lar radio tries on one of my hats”][/​caption]

and mak­ing friends

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33876” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“The Boston Phoenix and the Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor were well rep­re­sented at DaBar”][/​caption]

I was in no con­di­tion to drive, absence of alco­hol not with­stand­ing and crash­ing some­where was infi­nitely prefer­able to crash­ing while dri­ving to pick Stacy up. So I packed up my com­puter and looked for a chair, ANY chair and as luck would have it Michael Gra­ham was inex­plic­a­bly doing show-​prep in an uncom­fort­able chair with an incred­i­bly com­fort­able chair empty next to him.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33872” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Michael Gra­ham hard at work 3 hours later”][/​caption]

He informed me the chair wasn’t taken and so I sat in it at once, looped my lap­top bag around my leg, wrapped by scarf around my eyes and tilted my Stet­son style hat over my eyes. The non-​fedora paid off as the wider brim blocked out every­one else and I was asleep within minutes.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33874” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“No I did not take this photo of Bre­it­bart on Radio Row in my sleep”][/​caption]

Around 3:15 or so I woke up. The first sight I saw was Fin­gers Mal­loy sit­ting across from me talk­ing to an incred­i­bly attrac­tive woman I know from some­where but whose name escapes me.

After assur­ances that I was not only saw­ing logs for about 15 min­utes (was he keep­ing count?) I sud­denly noticed that Rick San­to­rum picked that moment to come out of the hall right in front of me and head to radio row. Instantly fully awake I grabbed my cam­era and started recording:

I was a tad per­turbed at my ejec­tion from the radio room but it could be jus­ti­fied for three good rea­sons: 1. The place was swamped. 2. WCRN did not have a table there. 3. After hav­ing just woken up in a chair after 30 hours straight of being awake I was less pre­sentable than Ver­min Supreme on a bad hair day. (The irony that the pre­vi­ous night the occu­piers assured me that they show­ered as I stood in the room unshow­ered for 33 hours was not lost on me) I did think how­ever that clos­ing the door on me so I couldn’t take still shots was bad form and uncalled for.

and hey at least being kicked out of Radio row where less that 6 hours ear­lier I was wel­come and less than 24 hours ear­lier I was on the Michael Gra­ham show was at least a story.

At this point I called Stacy again and this time he was ready for me, so I hopped in the car to go pick him up grab­bing gas along the way.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33878” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“and those are the tobacco prices in the Cheap state of NH”][/​caption]

Stacy being Stacy he wasn’t ready when I got there but that gave me time to fin­ish a Rosary before we left for the Der­ry­Field Restaurant

There was a back room near the bar that was setup as an alter­na­tive fil­ing room, I set up there with Stacy even though he had a place in the front and pre­pared to eat

While set­ting up in the back I noticed a table of fel­lows tak­ing a look at us, never one to pass up the chance to talk to vot­ers I went over and talked. It turned out the party included the owner of the place. Like many restau­ran­teurs I’ve inter­viewed he talked about the need to be care­ful about expenses dur­ing harder times while keep­ing up qual­ity. One method used is this 3 – 7 Menu:

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33880” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“that’s quite a deal”][/​caption]

I passed that menu around a bit and a lot of folks took advan­tage of it. I had the plain pizza as an appe­tizer, it was first-​rate. Stacy had the Pep­per­oni for Sup­per. Ed Mor­ris­sey had the Crab Cakes.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33883” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Stacy and the San­to­rum crew”][/​caption]

As the returns came in, it was appar­ent that my bet was pretty much doomed thanks to democ­rats who choose to vote Hunts­man over Pres­i­dent Obama (who drew just under 49,000 votes fail­ing to out-​poll Ron Paul but edg­ing Ver­min supreme.) but that appar­ently thanks to the lack of an air game due to the time already pur­chased, the SOPA issue and Todd Palin’s endorse­ment of Newt Gin­grich 4^th place would be a bat­tle as each can­di­date took turns in the spot.
[cap­tion id=“attachment_33884” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“The Sen­a­tor arrives”][/​caption]
After Rom­ney, Paul and Hunts­man spoke Sen­a­tor San­to­rum arrived.

I thought the snark when he was intro­duced as the “Next pres­i­dent of the United States” as is tra­di­tional was uncalled for and unpro­fes­sional. Sen­a­tor San­to­rum took the stage with his wife, daugh­ter and son mak­ing his case:

He then greeted sup­port­ers for a bit

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33885” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Senator and Mrs. San­to­rum with sup­porter”][/​caption]
The final num­bers gave Newt a 49 vote edge over San­to­rum. That was painful but it could be worse con­sider these numbers.

UPDATE New fig­ures from the Sec of state of NH just up show San­to­rum edged Gin­grich by 138!

Rick Perry ® 1766

Ver­min Supreme (d) 831

A sit­ting gov­er­nor of Texas man­aged to edge this fellow

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33882” align=“aligncenter” width=“220” caption=“Vermin Supreme: Image via Wikipedia”][/​caption]

by under 1000 votes.

And you want me to be wor­ried about Rick San­to­rum miss­ing 4^th by 50 win­ning 4^th by 138 votes

Around 11 p.m. or so Stacy was com­plain­ing about upload speeds so we pre­pared to leave:

I sug­gested we head to my house where he could upload but he pre­ferred the Radi­son, so we headed there giv­ing a lift to a fel­low from the Wall Street Jour­nal and I went over to J D’s pub to wait for Stacy who said he would only be an hour.

I ran into Fin­gers again along with Kerry Picket. One of the Democ­rats on the bal­lot showed up hold­ing this sign

I would have done an inter­view but I was still too tired to do it coher­ently how­ever some­thing some­one said, I don’t remem­ber who it was inspired the muse and got me writ­ing a piece that I’ll fin­ish today for post­ing tomor­row, the writ­ing was slow as I was a tad tired but I shortly noticed some of the guys I thought had done the Morn­ing Joe setup 24 hours ear­lier. So I packed up look­ing for Stacy and found him hob­nob­bing near the front desk and we were on the road by 2:15 a.m.

It was slightly annoy­ing for Stacy to keep ask­ing me if I knew where I was going and if I was awake but in the end that helped keep me awake and uncrashed.

We got to the house at 3 a.m. but there was an issue with his board­ing pass. It was just too late to worry about it I hit that sack fig­ur­ing I’d fix the issue in the morn­ing. The plan had been to leave by 8:30 to get Stacy to the Air­port at 10, but I woke up at 9:30. I woke up Stacy and had him log onto my lap­top and print his passes from there while I rushed his bags into the car. Thanks to a total dis­re­gard for speed lim­its and ignor­ing my usual dis­dain for toll roads I man­aged to make it to logan air­port before 11 a.m.

My plans to hit the sack when I got home were unfor­tu­nately shat­tered by cir­cum­stances so I started upload­ing the videos and pho­tos that you have just seen lit­er­ally falling asleep at the key­board until I woke up this morn­ing to tell you this tale.

Update 2: Fixed the Wasserman-​Schultz photo that didn’t scale properly