Frantic formulation. Nervous anticipation. Heightened expectation.
Southeast Louisiana residents awaiting Tropical Storm Fay?
No - the city of Denver preparing to be hit by the Democratic National Convention.
On Saturday evening, the full brunt of the convention - 4,000 delegates, 15,000 members of the media, and limo-loads of marquee names from the worlds of film, telecasting and music -- had yet to smack Denver. My connecting flight from Dallas was only two-thirds full.
From the atmosphere, the terminal of the snazzy Denver airport resembles a giant, multi-peaked white circus tent - an appropriate entry point for the political carnival around to stretch out.
Inside the airport, convention volunteers in orange T-shirts found few delegates to direct. One volunteer reminded me that Denver's heights altitude necessitated the using up of extra water. "Have a wizard trip," she said.
We're not in Louisiana any more. The Denver drome bathrooms two-fold as crack shelters. Sharp-looking silver receptacles collect plastic, aluminum and newspaper for recycling. Wind-swept fields extending for miles around the airport are criss-crossed by wooden barricades, which keep snow drifts from blowing onto the highway. Big skies rendered in swatches of atomic number 27 and louis Harold Gray stretch to the remote mountains. The air is thin only mercifully humidness free.
Already all of Denver is engaged in a Celebrity Watch. A deejay on "Denver's independent alternative" rock place reported that Oprah Winfrey and knocker Nas were spotted at a Nordstrom department store.
Early-arriving New Orleans musicians caused less of stir, but are here in force. A duad dozen - Allen Toussaint, Tab Benoit, Terence Blanchard, Marva Wright, Irma Thomas, special edgar Guest Randy Newman - ar slated to perform tonight at the Colorado Convention Center for the convention's delegate welcoming party, then hustle over to the Fillmore Auditorium for a $500 a ticket fundraiser for Friends of New Orleans, a Washington D.C. non-profit that advocates on behalf of Louisiana's recovery.
Several musicians rehearsed Saturday afternoon at the Fillmore Auditorium. At a downtown chophouse Saturday night, a server informed our table that he had been at the Fillmore during that afternoon's dry run. He was blown away when piano player Allen Toussaint sat in with trey of the original Meters -- guitarist Leo Nocentelli, bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste.
Much later on Saturday, Terence Blanchard held court at a turning point of the Warwick Hotel bar, laughing and jocose with representatives of the Tipitina's Foundation and this correspondent. Blanchard doesn't constantly get credit for existence as risible as he is.
The presidential race came up, as it will in most every Denver-area conversation this week. Blanchard bemoaned the effectiveness of political attack ads and reluctantly proposed that Democrats must go after John McCain sharply if they are to win. In an age of reality television and lowest common denominator amusement, Blanchard suggested, "people don't want to be elevated."
The conversation turned to confrere jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis's new album with Willie Nelson, "Two Men With the Blues." Blanchard had yet to hear the album, merely the apparently unlikely pairing surprised him.
But then once more, he aforesaid, "the macrocosm is changing. You've got a black man running for president."
This week, that race runs all o'er Denver.
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