Red, White, and Beeber.

Hello America!

I had the great privilege of experiencing the great Bakersfield Business Conference this last weekend. My only prior knowledge of this event was that my parents used to go when I was a kid and I remember hearing about some of the exciting people they got to see. Bill Cosby, Governor Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, Dana Carvey....Needless to say I was very excited.

In case you are not familiar with the line-up for this year, it was less of a celebrity-filled business conference and more of a politically stacked GOP convention.

The down side for me is that I am literally clueless when it comes to politics. I know... I'm a horrible American, Obama will never want to play basketball with me, and I'm the reason people hate my generation. Whatevs.

So! Here was my experience:

6:30a - Pick up mom. Sleepy and hungry.

7:00a - Arrive at Cal State. It took us probably 15 minutes to get down Kroll. There was a Lexus in front of me and a Mercedes behind me. My Sentra did not blend.

7:10a - Walked in the main entrance. The first thing I noticed were thousands of flags lined up. Tons. Everywhere. It turned out to be a 9/11 memorial. They posted a flag for every life lost. It was a pretty intense visual.

7:12a - Grab my first cup of coffee. McDonald's coffee. A little weird...not that great. But there was other coffee available.

7:15a - Grab a croissant. There were food tents EVERYWHERE. No one went hungry that day.

7:30a - Checked out a little farmers market tent they had set up. Every kind of fresh fruit imagineable and some veggies too. Grabbed some snacks for the day here.

8:00a - Mom and I realized whe had pretty much checked everything out and had about an hour and a half before the conference started.

8:45a - We notice the ferris wheel and I emotionally manipulate my mom to ride it with me.

8:55a - Dawn Beber has a meltdown on the ferris wheel. Its high, the gondolas swing, mom hates me right now. I should have known by her pre-wheel jitters.

9:10a - Ferris wheel hell finally comes to an end.

9:30a - Conference Starts! I don't remember the emcee but I remember him making a really weird weed joke that bombed. An interesting start to the day.

9:50a - Rich Little. Comedian? Impressionist? Not really sure...I took this time to go the bathroom. By the dubs, the bathrooms were the worlds nicest porta potties. Flushing toilets, sinks. The BMW of porta potties.

10:15a - Joe Clark. High school principal and education reformer. This is the dude that the movie Lean on Me was based on. He was really great. Really inspirational. Minus his love of reciting motivational poster slogans. "Shoot for the moon 'cause even if you miss you'll land amongst the stars." It cheapens your message, Joey. Here's a shot of Morgan Freeman as Joe Clark. I like to imagine he's saying something into his bullhorn like "Choose the boose ya lose!"

10:40a - Newt Gingrich. Former speaker of the house of representatives. Okay...so now we're cooking with gas. Listen....you're getting an idiot's guide to the day so can I be real with you? I don't remember what Newt talked about. I just know he made a lot of people really happy and got everyone fired up. Everyone got a little plastic American flag. Basically it was a flag of judgement and you waved it when you agreed with a point a speaker made. I personally loved this. Mostly because of the judging part...but Newt got those flags-a-waving!


11:05a - Herb Cohen. Internationally renowned negotiator and author. Herb was the only guy that I would count as an actual business dude. Also the only dude with a legit sense of humor. I really enjoyed hearing him speak. He talked a lot about the difficulty of business negotiating and why it tends to go south a lot. High five of the day goes to you, Herb.

11:30a - Dick & Lynne Cheney. 46th vice president of the U.S. and former second lady. I wonder if Lynne ever thinks to herself, "Second lady is the first loser." Anyhow....Dick (who I would much rather call by his Christian name, Richard) was kind of a let down. Yeah I get it, he's sick, he's recovering from a major surgery. He was really pale, thin, and just not looking good. They set it up as an interview of Richard by Lynne. It wouldn't have been that bad if Lynne hadn't been trying to convince the crowd that she was trying to think of what to ask. Lynne, no one thinks for a hot minute that you have not already had these questions cleared and answers approved by your handlers. Let's cut the crap. I was really captivated by Rich's account of 9/11 and his experience that day. Having to be separated from the president, the chaos of that day. Very interesting. But overall...no energy, no crazy enthusiasm. He just kind of sat there, threw out some republican power words, and left.

12:00p - I took a hike during Jane Seymour's speech to check out Cal Thomas. I ended up catching Bob Beckle instead. Political consultant and co-columnist for USA today. Bob was fun! He bragged about being 1 of 3 liberals on site and assured everyone he was carrying a gun. He told a really crazy story about someone shooting at his face. He survived because someone came behind the gunman and knocked his arm out of the way and the bullet went through the roof. Intense.

12:30p - Lunch. Nothing fancy.

1:30p - Some comedy trooped named Capitol Steps performed but I watched it from the jumbo tron outside while I stood in a ridiculously long line for ice cream. That mint n chip was worth every minute though. There was a nice breeze while I was standing in line...not so nice was one of the flags wrapping itself around my head while I had to act cool.

2:00p - Governor Gary Johnson. Former Governor of New Mexico. Now the reason I wanted to check out this guy was because in my previous night's pre-conference wikipedia search I had read that Gary Johnson was a rumored republican candidate nominee for the 2012 election. So Gov. Johnson starts telling us all of his accomplishments in office. The 700+ bills he vetoed. How he won over his constituents. Then he spent about 15 minutes of his allotted 20 to talk about legalizing marijuana. Not expecting this! I found it pretty funny to sit in this big group of uber conservatives listening to a dude discuss the difference between "smoking pot and having smoked pot". Weirdly enough, this was the first guy I've heard a decent enough argument from to consider voting for it. We shall see. I still agree that the best argument for legalizing weed is so stoners will shuuutt uuup already.

2:30p - Rudy Giuliani. Former mayor of New York. I had looked forward all day to Rudy! I really enjoyed hearing him speak. He also shared some stories of his 9/11 experience. Being told to watch out for debris falling from the twin towers only to find out that falling debris was actually people jumping from the top stories. I remember hearing about that on the news and seeing pictures in Time magazine. It still doesn't seem real, you know? It was definitely weird to hear it from someone who was actually there and had to stare it in the face. My flag of judgement waved hardcore during a lot of Giuliani's speech. This was also when I started taking camera phone pictures. Look! Its Rudy!


3:00p - Goldie Hawn. Actress. Goldie Hawn had nothing of substance to say. She had wrinkly skin from years of tanning, she kept grabbing her hair and giggling. I was over it. Not even phone camera worthy.

3:25p - Mitt Romney. Former Massachusetts governor. I just remember thinking....Isn't he mormon? How come he's not form Utah? Is that hair for real? What kind of name is Mitt? Short for Mitten? Anyhow....sweet pic of Mitt...

3:50p - Laura Bush. Former first lady of the U.S. Laura....what a doll! Definitely one of my faves. She gave her entire speech with a bobble head of herself sitting on the podium. She was funny, she was sweet, she laughed at herself. She shared a lot about what it meant to be the wife of a president during an extremely uncertain time in our country. Regardless of how you feel about the war or decisions made by the Bush administration, she was the wife to the most powerful man in America in time where America was under attack. I really loved her. Look for the bobble head....

4:15p - Karl Rove. Former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to George W. Bush. Karl Rove is kind of like a robot only with less personality. I can't tell you a single thing he spoke about because in my head I was debating if Rove is a d-nozzle or not a d-nozzle. The jury is still out on that one.

4:40p - Sarah Palin. Former Alaskan governor and 2008 vice-presidential candidate. Oh. Em. Gee. Before Sarah came on they played a video montage. It included pictures of her shaking hands with soldiers, shooting guns, and volunteering at community events all while wearing designer jeans with an A+ updo. She was introduced by the emcee as "the next president of the United States." With that, this tent with over 10,000 people inside lost its mind. It was probably similar to the reception Justin Bieber gets at a Mall of America performance. I did not wave my flag of judgement. In all truthiness, I am not a fan of Palin. Mostly because I find very little value in what she's offering and I'm actually shocked she's still in the game because I was pretty sure her credibility and reputation were shot after the meltdown that was the 2008 presidential campaign. But whatevs. I was up for hearing her out and seeing what all the hype was about. Sarah yelled her 25 minute speech which was actually less of a speach and more of a live reading of a speech that was prepared for her. Turns out, she's a bad reader. She stumbled on her words. Delivered several anti-climactic one liners. Used a really weird metaphor about mama grizzlies growling for her cubs. I still have no clue what that was about. Ripped on every democratic leader currently in office. Talked about looking out of for the little guy (to a crowd of people who paid $500 each to hear her). She had zero positive things to say. In her criticism of what everyone was NOT doing she had no solutions of that they SHOULD be doing. I just found no substance to what she had to say and no love of a good Canadian accent could change that. A shot of Sarah wearing her typical power red lady suit.

5:10p - Special guest time. Every year there is one speaker who is kept on the downlow. With all the Bush administration speakers this year the general consensus in my vicinity was that it would be Bush himself. I also thought maybe it would be Conan O'Brien but that mostly just wishful thinking on my end. It ended up being Chesley Sullenberger better known as Captain Sully. He was the pilot of flight 1549 which landed safely in the Hudson River saving the lives of the 155 people on board. For the first time all day I was torn between waving my flag and clapping. I settled for clapping so hard my biceps hurt. He was so sweet and humble. A true hero. A great end to a great day! Take a look at Sully's sweet mustache...


So let me bottom line all this for you with some key points I learned at the 2010 Bakersfield Business Conference.

• If you want to make a republican cheer mention the glory days of Ronald Reagan.
• Republicans like to talk about 9/11 A LOT.
  
• My love of glitter and costume jewelry will only grow with age. If I had a nickle for every homemade glitter shirt I saw I still woudln't be able to afford Sarah Palin's hair dresser.
• There is no line too long for most people if something is being given away for free at the end of it.
• Ferris wheels make Dawn Beber cry.
• I may live in a blue state but this is a RED city.
  

That is my official synopsis of my day spent with a bunch of card carrying republicans. What a party! I hope to do it again in 2015.