E-Mail This Article to a Friend Velvet ropes and metal barricades, with a guest appearance by the Reverend Jesse Jackson BY CHRIS WRIGHT

THURSDAY, July 29, 2004 -- I have a bit of a DNC hangover. I also have a bit of a hangover hangover. For that, I would like to offer a hearty thank you to the Starbucks corporation. But more on my debt of gratitude to the latte leviathan later. Off to the convention.

My first thought as I sat and watched Jesse Jackson speak yesterday afternoon was: shhh! "Rev. Jackson brought the house down," writes one observer this morning. Maybe so, but the only thing Jesse’s speech brought down for me was my mood. And possibly my ability to hear effectively.

The previous day, I’d marvelled at Barack Obama, the Illinois Senate candidate, who made his points via lilting, often lyrical rhetoric rather than slapping the podium and hollering like the Fleet was on fire. I know this may be a matter of taste — two men, two speaking styles — but the point is this: when Obama told me that "this country will reclaim its promise," I believed him, while "Keep hope alive!" sounded like a hackneyed catch phrase. Which is what it is. Where’s the beef?

When I saw that the Reverend Al Sharpton would be following Jackson — with the equally thunderous Dennis Kucinich appearing in between — I made up my mind. Even the promise of a closing speech from Chippy Edwards couldn’t sway me. Sayonara, DNC.

As I left the Fleet Center — en route to shuffle my feet beside the red carpet at the star-studded, couldn’t-get-a-ticket-if-you-were-God event at Louis Boston — I bumped, quite literally, into Matthew Broderick. "Hey!" I said, unable to think of anything better. Broderick was equally quick on his feet. "Hey!" he replied. A half a block away from this encounter, on Portland Street, I got another "Hey!" — only this one not quite so friendly.

I’d been standing looking at a red car behind a metal barricade, its doors, trunk, and hood open, as if it were an exhibit at a motor show. Various men milled about the vehicle, along with a German shepherd. One man checked the underneath the car with a mirror on a stick, while another inspected the engine. Weird.

"What are you doing?!" demanded one of the men who had been inspecting the car.

"Um, I’m a reporter?" I whimpered. "Just wondered what...."

"You can’t write down what we’re doing!" the man barked. "It’s not good for us! I want to live!"

Right. So scratch the part about the guy looking underneath the car with a mirror. Never happened. Even though it was witnessed by something like 500,000 people.

Anyway, the real terror last night was outside Louis Boston, where mobs of oglers stood 10 deep at metal barriers to watch cars pull up and get yelled at by the police. I personally saw Will Ferrell’s left elbow, and William Baldwin’s foot. Jerry Stiller was already inside, I heard, along with Paul Reubens and Alyssa Milano. Ben Affleck and Leonardo DiCaprio were slated to arrive later. People wanted into this thing so bad you could taste it, especially when it started to rain. As for me, all I wanted was to pee. Which is where Starbucks comes in.

See, if I hadn’t been able to cross the street to relieve myself, courtesy of the beverage behemoth, I would have left that blighted red carpet and gone home to watch Chippy on TV. As it was, I managed to squirm through security into the VIPest VIP party in town. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Free Harpoon. But where were the celebs? It was as if the red carpet had led in through the front door and straight out of the back. The truth of the matter, though, was that this A-list party had another cordoned off area for the A-pluses. So it was I found myself standing at yet another cordon, being jostled by the celebrity-starved masses, craning my neck for a peek at Leo or Ben.

"This is a fucking mob scene!" said one woman.

"Cluster fuck," said another.

"We might get in," I said, knowing in my heart that we wouldn’t. "Keep hope alive!"