cross-posted at skippy as well as a literal cornucopia of other community blogs.
last night skippy enjoyed a wonderful hour or so with his fellow progressives in santa monica who came to hear jerome armstrong and markos moulitsas hawk their book, their tour, their politics and their bad jokes at the crashing the gate book signing party at club 310.
we expound after the jump:
the event was sponsored by the clean money campaign, which is working towards 100% publicly-funded political campaigns (tho jerome quipped that then the public would wind up paying the poltical consultants). we’re not sure, but we’d guess there were about 50 folks who showed up to hear jerome and markos speak. the two were warmly received, and traded the microphone to expound on blogs, working inside and outside of the system, ned lamont, the dem establishment, the netroots, and the tough work of visiting 30 cities in 40 days.
markos opened with a great joke, saying that to get to the book signing, they went to the right address, only in los angeles and not santa monica; when they saw that all the signs were in korean, they knew they were in the wrong place (it’s an la joke). they took a few questions after their respective talks, and then signed some copies of crashing the gate for their <s>fans</s> <s>groupies</s> peers. they then had to take off earlier than scheduled, because somebody had arranged another signing at book soup, about 5 miles away, which in los angeles at 7 pm takes 4 hours to drive.
both gentlemen were very happy to see skippy, as skippy has been blogging on their respective sites since the jurassic period of blogs. in fact, markos used the word “blogtopia” in his autograph in skippy’s copy of ctg (because he obviously knows that yes! we coined that phrase!), and both authors mentioned that they are looking forward to seeing skippy at the yearlykos convention in vegas in june.
all in all it was a rousing santa monica welcome for two of blogtopia’s (y!wctp!) biggest stars, who are quite down-to-earth, approachable and sincere.
we hope cookie jill can make it to their santa barbara signing tonight!