ADVANCE

Political advance work is the basic stage management of a candidate/elected official's visit somewhere. I used to do this a lot and am getting back into it, in the run up to the 2004 election. Two quick stories:

DEAN AT THE MASONIC AUDITORIUM
San Francisco threw Gov. Dean a fundraiser/concert here on Sunday at the Masonic Auditorium, and I did my part to get the show on the stage. It was a great event. John Pettitt, the campaign photographer, took some shots as we were trying to get the good doctor off the stage and on to his next event:



MRS C' and FREE WILLY
One of my favorite trips doing this sort of stuff was to advance a trip Mrs. Clinton (then the First Lady) made to The 1999 Conference on Women and Democracy in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Once there, we spent a couple days setting-up a daytrip she was to make to the Westman Islands - a series of tiny, volcanic islands a few miles off the southern coast of Iceland. It was a crazy place.

On the agenda was a visit to see Keiko, the killer whale star of Free Willy.

Because they were preparing Keiko for a life in the wild, nobody could talk to, look at, or acknowledge this enormous whale, unless it was part of his pre-scheduled "social hour". We were standing on a floating platform in this enclosede bay with a huge whale trying very hard to get our attention. All the while, the woman in charge of the floating rig just kept saying, "Don't look at him! He can tell if you're looking at him. Don't look at the whale"

To this day, that remains the most surreal thing I've ever heard. We were standing above a 2-ton whale blowing water in the air and slapping the surface of the bay with his tail, and we're supposed to "act natural". Even the Secret Service guys were giggling.

A terrible storm kept Mrs. Clinton off the Westmans, so she never got to meet Keiko. He was huge and I wish I had at least winked at him. He could tell.