Howard Dean, Goo Goo Dolls and L.A. student share DNC fun
Howard Dean stunned Los Angeles high school student Amanda Alvarez when he announced the Goo Goo Dolls would perform at an event he was hosting at the start of the convention.
A fan of both the Democratic National Committee chairman and the band, Alvarez was starstruck by her proximity to both. She blogged about the experience here in our sister blog The Homeroom.
"I was completely shocked and overwhelmed when Dean, who was like five feet away from us, announced that the Goo Goo Dolls were to take the stage.
That was my first concert, and I don’t think it can ever be topped. I was literally only a couple of feet from John Rzeznik and when he started to sing "Iris" … Well I was almost speechless at that point. It was just incredible."
That's Rzeznik in the photo, performing at a music festival before the convention.
Alvarez is in Denver with a group of students as part of a project through Pepperdine University. Read the rest of Alvarez's adventures here.
— Diana Swartz
Photo: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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