Obama inauguration - this would be silly in a book

No writer with any self-respect would do it this way ...

The Hot Ticket to History, Unscalped - NYTimes.com

....The celebration for the first African-American president could not be more exquisitely timed. It occurs during the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, on the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, with the theme of the “new birth of freedom” foreseen by Lincoln at Gettysburg...

Reality (or at least our approximation thereof), is not nearly as sensible as fiction.

There are no inauguration hotel rooms in DC of course, they were all gone when I was there two weeks ago. So if you want to go, find a friend to crash with.