Just about once a year, I find myself at Polly Esther's. This is never by choice -- efforts to go dancing at a BETTER place are usually shouted down by the 80s contingent, also known as my old roommate L., who was visiting this weekend -- but if you grit your teeth and make a determined effort to embrace the atrocious cheeziness, it usually isn't too painful. But. Standing underneath a 30-foot poster of Wham!, watching a gigantic Rubik's Cube suspended from the ceiling flash its lurid colors in an indistinguishable pattern, standing amidst hundreds of weird Polly Esther's-loving people screaming out the lyrics to "Wild Wild West", holding a drink that contains both vodka and grape Kool-Aid, having Aaaahnold install his bionic eye in the Terminator video above the dance floor -- I cracked. Cultural overload from a period that I only truly remember through television and the playground equipment at my old elementary school and the words "Iran Contra Affair." It wasn't funny any more; it was just profoundly sad. Cosmic dissonance, I salute you.

It was also an interesting contrast to the protest I went to on Saturday. (This essay from the Post, although written in a tone more dismissive than I think is respectful, actually sums up the day nicely.) I had been very, very anti-protest in the last few years, after the infamous incident with the "I mock your value system" guy and the billions of dollars the WTO shrillsters have cost a city that can't afford to fund its schools, but I wanted to show up to this one. My usual pessimism and apathy were defeated by those very WTO protesters, actually -- my rationale was that the more thoughtful, logical, regular people attended, the harder it would be to dismiss the whole protest as bullshit.

And there were a LOT of people there. Sure, a lot of white college kids with hippie trappings (and I'm not saying that their voices don't deserve to be heard too, blah blah), but also a lot of families, a lot of older people, a lot of people with sensible shoes and sensible signs, a lot of veterans and soldiers in uniform. I saw a round, middle-aged woman wearing a little stars-and-stripes elephant pin and carrying a sign that said "Republicans against the war." OK, then. Not that I think this will do a damn bit of good, or that anyone who matters is paying much attention to a few hundred thousand people milling on the mall on a brilliantly cold January morning... but maybe someday, after this inevitable war, there will be a P.S. in a history book that reads, "not every American in this country supported this idea or this administration." Maybe.