For this political junkie, next week will be a died-and-gone-to-Heaven experience: I’ll be in Denver as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. It’ll be my first presidential convention since I was teargassed in Chicago in 1968 (well, actually I was working in a drugstore in the Loop and some of the teargas drifted over from Grant Park . . .)

I’m going to try to bring some of the sights of Denver back to my friends using a new toy: a $150 video camcorder that’s smaller than a deck of cards. You can upload videos directly from the camcorder to a laptop to Youtube on The Internets. Here’s my test run down in Richmond this morning:

As you can see, I may need to brush up a bit on my technique (like figuring out that if you try to film a scene while you’re walking, you could induce motion sickness). Still, this test roll is better than my initial try: I had the camera pointed the wrong direction and ended up with a 1-minute interview of my forehead.

So if things work out, next week I’ll post some video “Denver Reports” from the floor of the Convention. The experiment will be fun, and the experience will be unforgettable.