My week in Cleveland seems to involve quite a bit of time at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
That’s probably exactly what Cleveland wants.
Today, I covered Donald Trump’s arrival. His campaign would describe the arrival as the launching point for his appearance at the convention.
Trump’s event today involved him landing at an airstrip, then boarding a helicopter that would take him to a field that’s less than half a mile away. There, he’d be greeted by his family and Mike Pence.
The helicopter didn’t make a straight shot, though. Trump made a few laps around Downtown Cleveland. He and Pence would then talk to reporters and head out.
The candidates have had Secret Service details for a while, now. This means you have to show up to their events early and wait.
Even while you wait to go through security for several hours, that doesn’t mean you’ll take the time to snap a picture without your thumb in it.
It doesn’t.
After we passed through security, the reporters passed this display of, like, dogs or wolves or something.
Some of the reporters were stopping to take selfies.
I asked a TV photographer what it was all about. The photographer would give me some useful information while we mocked the TV reporters who were taking pictures of themselves instead of taking productive pictures of people walking by.
“I think it’s art,” the photographer would say. “I think there’s some meerkats farther up.”
Meerkats. This just got serious.
So I would continue moving toward the field where the helicopter would land. Around a corner, I would spot a herd of meerkats.
No. Herd doesn’t sound right. A school of meerkats? A colony of meerkats? A shrewdness of meerkats?
Yes, that’ll do. A shrewdness of meerkats.
Now, that’s art. I can understand why the artist would put an explanatory panel up in that spot.
The animals, you see, encouraged passersby to reexamine their perspective on urban life.
And it worked.
“I don’t have enough green meerkats in my life,” I would say to myself, frowning and gazing off into the distance. “I’ve nevertaken the time to get closer to green meerkats.”
While we waited, the Trump campaign played some hits on the speaker. We were, after all, right next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Loyal Scaiaholics will recall yesterday’s post where I pointed out that while it was nice to have John Kasich get a live band, I didn’t care for the tunes.
Then in comes the Trump campaign with some Creedence. “Born on the Bayou” came across the speakers. Then some opera music. One of the reporters who covers Trump full time said he hears a lot of Rolling Stones. I don’t mean this to sound political, but I suspect Trump had the stronger music director.
Consider the following hypothetical conversation:
MUSIC DIRECTOR: You know what would make America great again? More CCR.
TRUMP: [nodding] I’ll consider adding “I ain’t no Senator’s son, SON” to the side of the plane.
[Exeunt]
