Mr. Obama: Got any more of those raisins?

Barack Obama has succeeded wildly in forging his own identity and creating an intriguing narrative around it. When you're as famous as Obama, though, there are bound to be parts of your story you left out for a reason.  Or should I say, a raisin.  

One short chapter in Obama's life was a year or so spent at Columbia in New York, becoming involved with a woman, Genevieve Cook, whose story is told in a new book, Barack Obama:  The Story by David Maraniss. The book reads: 

'She remembered how on Sundays Obama would lounge around, drinking coffee and solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, bare-chested, wearing a blue and white sarong...

'Genevieve described [Obama's bedroom] in her journal this way: 'I open the door, that Barack keeps closed, to his room, and enter into a warm, private space pervaded by a mixture of smells that so strongly speak of his presence, his liveliness, his habits - running sweat, Brut spray deodorant, smoking, eating raisins, sleeping, breathing.'

(link to UK Daily Mail article) 

To a certain extent, we all do that.  We edit out the parts we don't particularly want made public, and put the rest out there for the world to see.  I'm fine with people seeing me as quirky, but not as eager to trumpet my sloppiness or secret eating.

But to me, knowing this about Obama makes me like him more.  The idea of our future President lying around in a sarong doing the crossword and eating raisins (so many that his room actually smells like raisins) is a huge comfort to me. Why?  Because it's so weird that it's oddly endearing.  Plus, if raisins had anything to do with his mojo (see article), the California Raisin Board has an incredible marketing opportunity on their hands.

Speaking of Obama and raisins, the only thing cooler than this video of an artist creating a portrait of Obama out of raisins is the uptempo jazzy/funky raisin music.