[Exhibitman]

Last year there was a Beatles convention in the hotel where the N54 dinner was held. Robert Silverman, Zach Rice and I crashed it. Talk about a crap fest...I've never seen such manufactured dreck for sale. But they did have lots of women--or woman-like creatures--in attendance, unlike the National, which looks like a gay pride parade for the awkward and unkempt. Except for the Olympic area last year, which you could instantly tell wasn't part of the main show because of the many women and thin people in there [the highlight of that pavilion for me was the elderly German dealer with all of the 1936 Nazi Olympics paraphernalia reminiscing in his movie villain accent about the good old days...]. Plus, the Beatles afficionadoes had a sing-along in the hotel lobby--you don't see that very often at the National. Zach, Robert and I ended up looking at some bootleg CDs sold by two dealers who were totally baked and who had boxes of Hostess product [Twinkies, cupcakes, etc.] stacked to the ceiling for the munchies to prove it. I haven't had to execute so many hippie thumb grip handshakes since I attended a party at a collective in Berkeley while I was in law school with this blonde co-ed I was trying to pick up. But I digress...