Hey, you guys remember Shawn? Yeah, neither do I, really, but he’s back from London and at the crack of dawn this morning he jimmied the lock on my patio door (especially impressive since I live on the second floor), plopped himself down on the couch and started watching the inauguration coverage. So meh, when in Rome…

Seriously, we would’ve used the liveblog room, but my technological wizardry is such that I can’t blog and watch cable at the same time. I could watch the streaming coverage online, but that would make me a bit of a poor host (“Everything okay out there? I’ll be out in a few hours — dig in the fridge if you get hungry”). I thought about stealing my neighbor’s wifi, but my sense of ethics (multiplied by my paranoia over getting caught) prevents that. So hopefully, every so often I’ll run from one room to another with my laptop and will, Rube Goldberg-like, upload our impressions of the day.

Impressions so far: it’s been eight years since I saw a new President inaugurated, and sixteen years since I watched an Inauguration sober. So this will be a different experience today. I am always awed, however, by the peaceful transfer of power, the idea that after humanity’s entire history of fighting and killing and dying over who was in control, that one guy would essentially just turn to the other and say “It’s all yours. Good luck.”

(10:48am) Will sez: Quite the impressive collection of luminaries filing in; you actually do get the impression of history streaming by.

On the other hand, being in a wheelchair makes Cheney look even more like a villain from a James Bond movie.

I can’t begin to imagine what’s going through Obama’s mind right now…

(11:35am):

Shawn sez: John WIlliams. As if he hasn’t defined iconic symbols enough with his movie scores, he now has defined a presidential office with his arrangement of SImple Gifts. Brilliantly performed and composed, the piece started disjointed and in disarray, however came together through the recognizable melody of Simple Gifts played, not coincidentally, by a black clarinetist.

Will sez: A powerful speech, interesting in that there was a strong appeal to a sense of Americanism without a sense of American exceptionalism, a reminder of what we’re supposed to be about instead of a simple feeling of “USA! USA!”

Oh. and check this out: http://www.whitehouse.gov/