Call me a geek, but I kinda love reading the pool reports from the John McCain and Barack Obama fundraisers.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to campaign minutia, here’s the background: Both candidates, in the interest of competitive transparency, recently decided to allow pooled press along on their high-dollar money-gathering adventures. There are strict rules, summarized in a recent pool report as: “We can stare at and listen to the participants but no touching or talking.” Still, even with those rules in place, the glimpse we now get of how the high-rollers roll is usually a fun read.

Take the recent report from the Rockefeller chateau:

Our night began at The Rocks, Jay Rockefeller’s chateau away from chateau deep in the hills of Rock Creek Park. To reach the site of this particular Obama fundraiser, you wind along the edges of Rock Creek Park and then turn up a steep, long, hey mistah Rockefeller, howabout $3000 to shovel your driveway sort of entryway.

There are oaks and Chestnut trees and then there’s the house, with four Ionic columns and a slate roof and 17 windows across the front and the Rockefellers apparently suffer no critical shortage of guest bedrooms. It is a useful reminder that before the Gates and Bloomberg and Warren B., there was old man John D. Rockefeller, who bequeathed successive generations of descendants a truly astonishing boodle of money.

But I digress. The fundraiser was standard issue, if it’s Tuesday night aren’t we dropping $28,500 per to dine with Barack? Your faithful scribes sat outside in an air-conditioned van whilst drinks were sipped. Then a staffer led us to an ante-room, where we noticed “The Reclining Bather” by Pablo Picasso. Just a thought, but I’d place a mid-two figures wager it was not a print.

And on it goes, with tantalizing talk of Mustard-Cognac sauce, Harvard law school buddies, and chocolate Corinthian glaces. Just in case you were wondering how the other half—or, really, the half of one percent that owns it all—lives.