Volleyball or death.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Poking political fun at the expense of various city governments, the Republicans, a Newt GIngrich quote on volleyball, Miss Universe, and others - Off the Map - Column

Yours truly was one of the zillions of VIPs who made it to the Republican convention floor. Well, OK, not the floor exactly. In order to get down there, you had to have a floor pass, which was pink. In the lower stands, all you needed was a blue pass, which I didn't have, either. But I did have this nifty yellow pass that allowed me to hang out near the escalators, and I could use the bathroom once every six hours. Of course, since there were 150,000 media types there, if you used the bathroom you ran the risk of being overcome by hazardous clouds of toxic hairspray tossed about by every weekened anchor in the country whose station was using hoola hoops and tinfoil as a satellite uplink. With a ratio of 7.5 of us parasitic sponges to every actual delegate, you could actually slide down ramps on the thin layer of slime that sparkled all over the convention center. I saw a TV news crew taping a radio guy who was interviewing a newspaper reporter. It got so incestuous, half the press went home with hemophilia.

* San Diego, California, where a local group is holding an exorcism of the convention center to cleanse the psychic residue left by the Republicans.

Newt Gingrich, fresh from exile under a rock, gurgled in front of a national television audience that "Freedom is beach volleyball." You can't make stuff up like this. Beach volleyball? That must make synchronized swimming the ultimate secret goal of Thomas Jefferson, right? The true cause for the fall of the iron curtain: rhythmic gymnastics.

The Republicans finished their convention with a lame pep rally.

Head cheerleader Susan Molinari did her doe-eyed Bambi impression: "Mother, please wake up," complete with key shots of her stunt baby, who had obviously been starved for thirty-six hours so she would slurp on cue. Molinari used polls that showed more teens admitting to drug use even though last week it was revealed she herself lied about having smoked marijuana. So what you're saying, Susie, is kids should lie to pollsters. Next, Jack Kemp tears up during his speech, but then the former Buffalo Bill cries during AT&T commercials.

By the way, how long will it take for the American public to get tired of Kemp's stupid football references? Enough, already.

Then Bob Dole gave an hour-long speech, although I swear it didn't seem much longer than a couple of days.

* Oakland, California, where the city spent $200 million wooing the Raiders back and now they can't even give the tickets away. I...