"Poets, priests, and politicians have words to thank for their positions."
--The Police

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- People are getting sloppy here. Ten days of total immersion in the American political system will do that to you. My boss left her cell phone in her hotel room while another colleague forgot a tie for his TV appearance. I was wandering around the hotel here looking for my BlackBerry while I was typing a message on it. It's easy to see how presidential candidates makes mistakes on the road; they're subject to these insane and punishing routines until November -- while most of us will be free from this tyrannical schedule in just another two days. But who's counting?

I can't figure out who's staying out in the town's outskirts with us. While there seems to be a certain number of low-level political operatives lurking around the hotel, there are also tourists and other oddballs. While I was in the small gym here, a guy walked in, took off his shirt, and started lifting weights and grunting as MSNBC blared from the TV.

The convention feels like it should be filled for these vain, grunting guys. There's a much brighter level of starpower here than in Tampa while an intensity of purpose also pervades the sticky air. Everything also seems more orchestrated for the media than for the delegates; we seem to get the better view and the better treatment. After all, 15,000 members of the Fourth Estate have descended on this sprawling town while there are fewer than 6,000 Democratic delegates.

I was too busy operating a prompter and worrying about other logistics to really absorb last night's speeches and I'm too tired to review them on YouTube while I write this and try to reflect at 2:50 a.m. The best place in the arena to really hear the speeches was the bathroom. The sound system that's usually reserved for the Charlotte Bobcats was piping in the convention's audio feed -- with the acoustics of the bathroom tiles amplifying the rhetoric.

My favorite news tidbit was that San Antonio Mayor -- and Democratic keynote speaker -- Julian Castro once played a trick on voters, having his identical twin brother stand in for him at a parade when he was first running for mayor. While nothing serious came of the incident, I think there are all sorts of Hollywood movies that could be made about a presidential candidate and his loser identical twin brother where they get involved in all sorts of hijinks.

There may be fewer hijinks in the coming days. The remnants of Hurricane Issac won't leave us alone, threatening to rain out or delay the president's big party on Thursday. I can already imagine all the metaphors being brushed out and polished by reporters if this storm comes to pass.

Selah.

Bob Hardt