Supa, Dupa.

SUPER TUESDAY in the life of a USC grad student:

This is a record of how Chris Nelson's day unfolded, as he struggled with the decision, tried to make sense of those over-hyped California ballot propositions, hounded his friends for their opinions, took pictures, voted, shot time-lapse video from his rooftop, and wandered around his neighborhood. Super Tuesday, indeed.

7:45 am:
My alarm goes off. First thought in my head: I hate my goddamn alarm. Second thought: It’s Super Tuesday and I still don’t know who the hell I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:50 am:
Still hate my alarm. Still don’t know who I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:55 am:
I have to find an alarm with a 10 minute snooze. I also have to get up and move my car from a meter spot. Is anyone campaigning against the L.A. County Parking Mafia?

8:15 am:
Back in bed. Too much work for school, need to hide from it for a while longer. Under covers. Wifey comes in and laughs at me. She’s Canadian and so can’t vote but has been a Hillary supporter from Day One. Why is the choice so obvious to foreigners? “It’s obvious to anyone with a brain,” she retorts. Ouch. I’m positive her tone had nothing to do with the fact that I had just crawled back into bed as she was leaving for work.

10:30 am:
The stress of all my work, of thinking about going from Hollywood to USC to Studio City to USC to Hollywood throughout the course of an 8 am to 10 pm day while fighting a cold on top of the weight of my impending civic duty was enough to finally chase me out of bed in a panic. Is there such a thing as pity for a man who wakes up at 10:30 am on a Tuesday? Worth a shot.

10:55 am:
Make some coffee. Fire off some emails. The wheels are turning. I start bombarding my friends with IMs to see if/how they have voted. I get wildly different versions of the same response.

11:15 am:
I check Facebook. People’s status messages are rife with Super Tuesday slant. From the benign “Get out and vote” to many more specific messages in favor of Obama. The manifestations of a) heavy interest among the under-thirty voting bloc and b) the overwhelming support for Obama among those people are abundant. I’m actually starting to think for the first time that he can really pull this off.

11:30 am:
Stupid California ballot propositions. If I see another sad, disenfranchised American Indian on TV standing in front of a corn field with his distraught compatriots…

11:45 am:
I tell my Hillary-hating friend Max that I am leaning toward Obama. He tells me that “twenty years from now, they won’t stone you.” I knew I was in this for something.

12:00 pm:
That’s it. Going to the L.A. Times website. Check their positions on the Props. Voting how they tell me to. Am I a sheep? An irresponsible citizen of a democracy taking my civic duty lightly? Perhaps. As I try to find impartial information from other sources, I hear a story on KCRW (L.A.’s NPR affiliate) about how the ballot measures in this state are completely out of hand as vehicles for special interest groups and lobbyists to covertly advance their positions. Going with The Times.

3:00 pm:
The deed is done. I woke up in a fog of cold virus, lack of sleep, and indecision. By 3 pm though I was convinced that I was part of something bigger, something meaningful, significant, a watermark in American history, something people will study with fervor for years to come. Just as I had seen all over USC campus the previous week, Obama was everywhere. At least in my universe. The notion that my few square blocks of campus and Hollywood are a microcosmic representation of the United States is far-stretched at best. But it sure as hell seemed that way.

3:30 pm:
Driving in my car to Culver City for a different assignment: a ride-along with Culver City police for my reporting class beat. See how cops spend Super Tuesday.

(turns out it’s busting 27-year-old, Jaguar driving, shoplifting parolees at Target, which puts a whole new spin on the epic sense of “hope” everyone is experiencing just because a few people get up and talk about how we can change pretty much everything that’s wrong with our country today by casting a vote. Hanging with cops brought the cynicism back full-force. Go figure.)

As I’m driving, I hear that Obama has won Georgia. An African-American dominated vote, but nevertheless, the first called victory of Super Tuesday goes to my choice. My man. The man with the plan.

10:00 pm:
After six hours with the Culver City Police, I am exhausted and greased from all the buttering up they do even to a measely student journalist. Don’t get me wrong. They were extremely nice. But I’m constantly in awe of how I’ve gotten by far the friendliest responses from the police when city councilmembers and supervisors won’t give me the time of day. Hell, a contractor won’t even call me back, but the cops took me out for a bbq dinner. I left trying to figure out which way was up. But that’s another story…

10:05 pm:
DAMMIT. Dammit dammit dammit. Clinton won California? How are the calling it with only 35 percent of the polls reporting? Absentee ballots? Something is messed up here. People casting votes months ago when McCain was on his last leg, Giuliani was the front-runner, and Obama was a blip on the 2008 radar that had a Hillary-supporting nation wondering why he just doesn’t wait another eight years. It felt like a sledgehammer to the temple. How could the progressive stronghold of the U.S. vote overwhelmingly in favor of the establishment? Or was I just bamboozled and lashing out at myself for taking the bait?

10:15 pm:
I call a few people. Calm down a bit. It’s sinking in. If this were the Republican primary, it would have been a Hillary slaughterhouse, but thanks to the proportional distribution of delegates, Obama is less than 100 shy of her count. I didn’t even know I was voting for the guy as of this morning, yet once the ballot was cast, I have felt such an emotional attachment to the cause. A large portion was probably personal validation, but hope is a strong word. Audacious even. (wink!)

Hope does cast a spell. A potent one. When Obama speaks, style is the substance. The thought of having someone so inspirational, so dynamic, such a poet of the public address, had become a sort of spiritual elixir. I know all of his supporters’ fingers are secretly crossed that he will have the acumen to wisely choose cabinet occupants should he get elected president. No one is entirely sure who his close friends and cohorts are— but as that presidential figurehead… man would he be awesome!

Turns out nothing was decided on Super Tuesday (except maybe that I will never shoplift at a Target). The choice for the Democratic nomination is out of my hands. Strange thing about this democracy of ours. It’s so easy to get charged up by enacting our most basic of civic rights. It’s stressful even. Especially when it all ended with a whimper and not a bang.