So the spouse and I went out for dinner and a movie -- "The Ghostwriter," which is not bad. Kind of has the same vibe as a lot of early '70s paranoid political flicks. And it accurately depicts Massachusetts as a place where the sun never shines and it rains all the time. (I kid -- mostly.)
Still the best part of the evening was in the lobby before hand. I saw a couple of old friends and went over to talk to them, and who were they with -- none other than the locker room lobbyist in chief Rahm Emanuel and another couple -- the woman in the couple looked incredibly familiar and I was racking my brain thinking of school auctions and soccer games and summer camp car lines, when I realized it was Amy Klobuchar. Emanuel was quite affable and seemed completely relaxed and in good spirits. (He's also really small -- quite short and very lean.) He and I were teasing my friend who is a Washington Post writer about the neo-con dominance of its Op-Ed page. He and Klobuchar then engaged in what appeared to be a friendly and substantive discussion about the cost of some legislative proposal -- I couldn't quite gather if it was the health care bill or the student loan proposal, but they both seemed to have a fluent command of the budget figures on it.
However, despite their apparent mastery of this minutiae, they had failed to buy movie tickets in advance and thus were shut out of Ghostwriter.
I was sorry to have to trot off to the show -- I definitely had a few questions I would have liked to have asked. (It also occurred to me again how strange it is to have peers in these positions of power -- Emanuel is a couple of months older than me and Klobuchar a couple of months younger -- although that may be because I can't quite acknowledge that I'm 50.)