DENVER NOTEBOOK: Celebrity, Sex and Booze

There are a few types of Democratic National Convention attendees wandering around the Pepsi Center I feel as if I ought to recognize: attractive and well-dressed (probably a TV person); rumpled and contemplating imminent unemployment (newspaper reporter); fiercely determined (Obama supporter); or really pissed (Hillary backer).

But being culturally clueless, I seem to recognize only semi-famous pols (New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who is going completely nuts on the convention floor as I write) who were walking laps around the concourse yesterday.

Then today, I finally got the camera out and whom do I encounter just after entering the arena but a retired NBA hoopster with a gambling problem—Charles Barkley—who in the normal fixation we have with celebrity, attracted a bigger crowd than either Corzine or Kucinich, even in an arena full of politicos.

Here are a couple other examples of my photojournalism: the whopping space given inside the convention security perimeter around the Pepsi Center to the company that makes Trojans (no visitors while I was walking by, but there are six hours to go before the parties start). Here's an explanation of how Trojans broke inside the fence at an event that is extraordinarily tightly scripted.



And finally, perhaps the most bizarre visitors to the Pepsi Center: the street team from Captain Morgan Spicy Rum.



OK, I realize most of the attendees need stiff drinks to endure days of election talk. And Diageo, the world's largest booze purveyor and owner of Captain Morgan, is a generous Democratic contributor, but I'm just not sure that spicy rum—flogged by two spicy chicks and a pseudo-buccaneer who looks like he should be doing commercials for freecreditreport.com—fits the Obama image or, to put it in convention parlance, is the drink we need.

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