Results tagged “inauguration”

As you may have read (or heard), our Avril Lavigne-loving Editor-in-Chief, Marcus Gilmer, attended the swearing in of President Barack Obama as a full-fledged member of the press (seriously, we haven't heard the end of his babbling on about it). A few days after the inauguration, the following panoramic photo was brought to our attention.

It is our extreme pleasure and privilege to present to you, Ever Present Reader, a new audio outlet for Chicagoist. This podcast series has been in the pipeline for a long time, and now it's ready to be birthed unto the world, pink and naked and here for your entertainment. We'll be providing you a new podcast each Monday to start your week off with Chicagocentric information that probably isn't being covered on local radio and TV.

Were you one of the blue, silver or purple ticket-holders for last week's inauguration swearing-in ceremony for Barack Obama that was turned away from the gate? If so, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies wants to hear from you, per our sister site DCist. Email them at feedback@jccic.senate.gov. In exchange, you'll receive a commemorative photo of the event. But don't bother trying to scam yourself a pic if you weren't a ticket-holder; they have lists with names to double-check, just like Santa.

    

We knew we were on to something with our Lego theme. "Lego master craftsmen" are finishing up a recreation of Obama's motorcade and swearing in. The model is located in Carlsbad, California, so it's not easy to get to but it's...pretty damn impressive, actually.

At 1 p.m. Chicago time this afternoon, Roland Burris will be officially sworn in as The Lord's Senator™ by Vice President Dick Cheney, ending a several-month-long saga that has been lively even by Illinois standards. Burris will be seated without any protest from any senate leaders in spite of a litany of threats earlier in the process. While Burris faced an uphill climb to gain acceptance from his soon-to-be colleagues, the current Senators promise they'll treat him like any other freshman senator. By duct taping him to his office chair and rolling him down the hall? "Like any other senator, he'll have to learn the ropes and not get lost getting to committee hearings, like I have. I think he'll come in with people open to meeting with him and getting to know him. I think it will be just fine," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn). Oh. Senators also are looking for Burris to distance himself from Blaogjevich once he is seated, saying a call for Blago's resignation could go a long way towards helping his cause, especially if he intends to keep his seat in 2010.

Words fail us.

             

Although Monday was President-elect Barack Obama's first full day in Washington, D.C., planning and preparation for the inauguration has been going on for at least a year. Here's a preview of the work that goes into building the infrastructure for the inauguration.

This morning, as Obama arrives in Hawaii for a holiday vacation, his decision to include Prop 8-supporting evangelical minister Rick Warren continues to ignite the passions of the gays, who are left baffled, wondering why the invitation has not been rescinded. Obama has even released talking points, emphasizing he doesn’t agree with Warren on LGBT issues, but they do agree on issues of moving toward a sustainable planet and on “many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice.”

This afternoon, President-elect Barack Obama defended his choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren for his inauguration invocation. The choice angered gay rights advocates because Warren supported Proposition 8. From the AP:

Obama told reporters in Chicago that America needs to "come together," even when there's disagreement on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he said.

Continue reading "Obama Defends Choosing Warren for Inauguration"

The huge banner containing an image of President-elect Barack Obama and makes it pretty obvious that Hideout's owners and staff were pretty vocal supporters of the dude when he was running for office and are tickled pink that he's about to take the reins.

President-Elect Barack Obama has become known for making and drawing comparisons to Illinois' other President, Abraham Lincoln. Now he's going one step further by taking the same train route from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. that Lincoln, his "political idol", did before his inauguration. The journey will begin for the Obamas on January 17 when their train will depart Philadelphia after a celebration event. There will be a stop in Wilmington, Delaware to pick up the Biden family, and then a stop in Baltimore for a speaking engagement which is expected to draw 150,000 people. And then? Washington for the inauguration on January 20.

While the U.S. Government has seen to it that you won't be able to buy inauguration tickets off of eBay, StubHub, or Craigslist, it seems you still have an opportunity to legally secure yourself some tickets to the swearing in ceremony. As long as you have a spare $50,000, that is.

Mr. Obama’s President Inaugural Committee is offering a $50,000 package to his top donors that includes, among other goodies, four tickets to “inaugural events.” Those events include, according to an Obama official, the swearing-in ceremony.

After the holiday, we were ready to hunker down under a blanket and catch up on our Oprah Watch-ing, but were dismayed to find a week's worth of repeats coming down the pipeline. But we get it, Oprah's got priorities. While she left us to revisit Barbara Walters' sultry affair and deets on the latest internet scam, Oprah took time off to plan Obamarama Take 2. We figured she wasn't done celebrating, but it turns out the Obama Inauguration Special the Oprah camp has planned will be more grandiose than we thought. It appears Oprah will shoot her show from Washington D.C. all inauguration week, and has rented out the Opera House at the Kennedy Center for the occasion. As she told Access Hollywood, "See you there...that's the place to be." (If Access Hollywood's invited, we assume our invitation is on its way.)

O.K., Barack Obama has nothing directly to do with this, but Washington D.C. bars will be open 24-hours New Orleans style for the inauguration next year. No word yet on whether alcohol soaked Hurricane slushies will be sold and allowed to take into the streets in huge Styrofoam cups.

To no one's surprise, sources say the Oprah camp is putting together a special series of shows that will broadcast from Washington D.C. this January surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration. Producers haven't yet nailed down a site for Oprah's Obamarama Take 2, but they're rumored to have their eye on the Kennedy Center. Oprah is also said to be planning an inauguration bash, and is looking for a spot for that too. The important part of the work is done, though, since she already has the dress. [S-T]

      

Here at the Flashback Desk, we usually like to keep to the timespans of our collective lives – that is, going back to around the 80’s or 70’s. On today’s Flashback, we’re going to take you back to the 60’s – the 1860s, that is. Presumably, as the glow of the election starts to fade, some of your thoughts are bound to turn to inauguration road trips. So for those of us preparing for a January trip to a historic event, this week’s Flashback takes us to March 4th, 1861, and the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.

Proving once again that there is no such thing as "free" in the age of internet entrepreneurs, tickets for Barack Obama's Inauguration are the hottest item on the internet. The thing is, they haven't been distributed yet. Oh, and, again, they're free. So why are people shelling out up to $10,000 for them and how is any of this legal? Well, the answer to the first question is obvious: Obama's election was a historic event and he's built up one the largest active followings of any politician in our lifetime.

Button up your sweaters and pack a picnic, because Wilco is set to give the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park a proper inauguration tonight. The skies don’t appear to hold the same nasty storms that plagued the Decemberists’ show there in July, so the full beauty and potential of the space should be on display this evening. Not to mention, it’s freakin’ Wilco. A beautiful Lollapalooza 2006 performance aside, it’s been a while since perhaps...

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into...

Daley has suddenly become the great scholar, spouting wisdom in public about public-school reform, not just in Chicago, but also in Illinois. Over the weekend, he fired another salvo in his crusade to save the children. Opening a community center in Avondale, Hizzoner used the opportunity to call on the governor to institute mandatory full-day kindergarten, which would have the added effect of lowering the mandatory age of enrollment to 5 (it's currently 7, but about 95% of Illinois 5- and 6-year-olds are enrolled in school). Education is always a hot topic, especially in an election year, and this isn't the first time that Daley has pushed for this kind of change.

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system. It's going to take more than server problems to get Torontoist into hot pants -- and if the short short post wasn't enough to cause us some server problems of our own, how about those eye gazing parties? It's enough to make them contemplate joining the EU. Our friends at Phillyist are having server problems in places where the sun don't shine, caused perhaps by the great Thai food they ate last week. Well, when you're having server problems of the stinky kind, perhaps it's for the best that you stick to phone sex. We thought about asking Gothamist if this building collapse had our server inside it (thus explaining the server problems, you see) , but then we found out the collapse was part of marriage gone wrong. New York's new lacrosse team needs a name, might we recommend "The Server Problems"? Screw lacrosse, we're playing bocce. Or maybe we'll forgo the sports all together and hit Movable Hype 9.0. But how will we get there when server, we mean, traffic problems go unchecked? Over at Miamist, they debate the benefits of server problem-free Starbucks, over local joints. They also look into crashes of a nonserver problem nature, and a court TV show shot on their beaches. It's no server problem when Austinist's local boys The Mercers get love from Esquire. MySpace is also no stranger to server problems but that's not what has Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott pissed at them. Greg, have a crack cookie. Seattlest found a great way around the server problems, as they took it live with their inaugural trivia night. Perhaps author and radio personality John Moe will be an answer at next week's competition? But if you drive there, better not piss off Keith Gormezano, or server problems like you never imagined might rain down on your poor little car. Bostonist would like to send some some server problems toward rejoicing gay marriage opponents. Sigh. Bostonist seems pretty good at bartering, so maybe they can trade some of those anti-marriage busybodies for some problem-free servers. How we regret the server problems in the language section of our brain that keep us from learning Portuguese! We'd love to read Sampaist, but will have to settle for the visual. This week we see "an advertisement from 1974 talking about the inauguration of the subway in São Paulo (also know as SP). The funny thing about this video is that it is totally nonsense. They mixed the subway with a carnival parade and a party inside the subway car." Our pals down south also posted this music
video released by the band Cansei de Ser Sexy. Scroll down for the English portion of this post. Houstonist refuses to butter up nemesis Ken Lay, who had his official send off to that server problem down below last week. (Jesus wept.) Shanghaiist causes us the enviable server problem of "too many awesome social options", as they rock our world with , and encourage us to fag hag it up. Then there's DJ Jazzy Jeff to see. Whatever we do in Shanghaii, we're bringing this guy. But not her.

To prevent any possible damage during the construction of a 230,000 square-foot wing designed by architect Renzo Piano, Marc Chagall's "American Windows" will be removed temporarily from the Art Institute of Chicago on May 2, 2005. If you anticipate wanting to see the piece in the next four years, you'd better get down to the museum in the next week-and-a-half. The new wing isn't expected to be completed until 2009.

There's a whole lotta hoopla starting in our nation's capital today. There's gala balls, parades, a big speech, and probably at least one or two beer bashes. Our compadres in Washington, DCist, have the whole coverage, but here's the meager Illinois angle: Basically, Chicago Democrats have all come home, or gone elsewhere. Chicagoist has spotted a number of Chicago Congressmen in Chicago this week, and we've heard stories of more than a few elected Illinois...