TRAIL MIX

Keyes Takes a Dive

Republican candidate Alan Keyes ended a Sunday rally by jumping, gray suit and all, into an adoring crowd. As the band Rage Against the Machine blasted from speakers, the former ambassador leaned back into a pack of college students and laughed as they passed him above their heads. Guerilla film director Michael Moore (“Roger & Me”) had corraled the mosh pit and promised that the first candidate to jump into it would win his endorsement. Steve Forbes had declined the group’s invitation earlier.

“I thought it would be a perfect symbol of what my campaign is about,” Keyes said afterward, “trusting people.”

Faint Praise

The candidates would like to think it was the power of their words, but sources say it was the lack of ventilation that caused at least four people to faint at campaign appearances in the last three days. On Sunday, at a George W. Bush rally in a stuffy high school auditorium in Waterloo, Iowa, a man and a woman had to be helped out of the packed room after fainting. Bush joked, “It’s just my hot air that affected the lady. Once she got out of the range of my words, she recovered rapidly.” Earlier, in Mount Vernon, Iowa, a Cornell College student fainted at a Bill Bradley rally. And on Friday, as John McCain spoke in the basement of the Greenville, S.C., library, Miss South Carolina passed out.

By the Numbers

1124--Grand Avenue address of Alan Keyes’ Des Moines headquarters

1117--Grand Avenue address of the Blue Nude adult bookstore

Weather Vane State

As Iowans head to their caucuses tonight, they can expect freezing temperatures and snow flurries. Iowa’s average temperature on Jan. 24 at 7 p.m., when the caucuses will begin, is 22. That day’s record low temperature came in 1894: -21 degrees. The record high--62--hit in 1967 and 1981.

A Budget Car Rental agent, after a reporter gave his address in Los Angeles: “That’s in Nevada, right?”