by James Norton

That’s right, another person chiming in about the over-hyped, underwhelming, boring and complete yawn-fest known as the DNC. Get over it. Menino better pray Kerry gets elected, because after the losses in revenue the businesses had after being promised a windfall, the rushed negotiations with the unions and the general aggravation incurred by everyone, not just City of Boston residents, he’s going to need to golden parachute Flynn-style to the Vatican.

For us, it wasn’t a hard choice. Sure we heard the hype. No, we didn’t want to be stuck and not able to work or even travel very far for fear of being stuck in hours of traffic. The kids are still visiting from Missouri and we had a wedding to go to in Falmouth on July 24th, so we figured we would stay down until the 28th or 29th and avoid the mess.

It was a beautiful wedding – right out of a story book, with no details overlooked.

It was a great start to what was shaping up to be a very relaxing week away from the craziness that was surely mounting in the Boston area. There were a lot of Somerville notables at the wedding, and you could see the tension in their eyes – not knowing what to really expect from the DNC and how it might impact Somerville.

The only indication that it was going to be a long, drawn out week was the place we were staying. Without naming names or places directly, I will say that the father of the bride recommended we stay at an older, established hotel owned and operated by a local family for many years. It was Motel Hell.

The room was like traveling back in time to 1979. Not a damned thing has been updated in at least 20 to 25 years. Smelly carpeting, the crappiest little TV I have ever seen in my life and a bathroom with no GFI plug and no ventilating fan.

Now I’m no electrician, but isn’t there a state law that requires those last two items and wasn’t that passed like 20 years ago?

I haven’t forgotten about the “best one yet” – the mattresses that were so old and springy I was up half the night every night we stayed there with back spasms. I couldn’t even remotely guess how old those torture devices were.

Mostly all of the friends we see during the 4th of July week were either at the wedding or were in Falmouth taking time off vacationing on Cape Cod at this point, so we knew we would have plenty to do, places to go and people to see. For the most part, the weather was terrific and we enjoyed ourselves very much as far as being on The Cape is concerned.

Then the DNC started. The yawn fest began with the typical speeches touting Kerry and/or Edwards, friends, family and war buddies alike got up there and went on and on and one about how it is time to make a stand for the country. It got so boring, that by the mid point of the second day, the press was starving for a news worthy item.

Tuesday night they got it – Fox News managed to arrange an interview between news commentator and radio personality Bill O’Reilly and filmmaker Michael Moore who recently released the pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

I am a huge fan of film and the art of making good cinema. I am not a fan whatsoever of Hollywood making political statements, especially when they are very one sided and calculated. I have said it before, people like Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen and of course, Michael Moore – should all check their ultra liberal, one sided, closed mind politics at the door.

I was happy to see O’Reilly and Moore go at it head to head, although I had hoped in the end that it would have been longer. Aside from the facts, which were argued masterfully by O’Reilly, you couldn’t help but feel good that the interview went off without any crazy antics and at the end of the day, it came down to two very different people with two very different points of view.

One interview – that’s it. Boring speeches, no traffic gridlock, no windfall for local businesses – they lost money. The DNC was a dud – don’t ever bring it back.