At the White House this evening, President Obama spoke to honorees of the Kennedy Center. Obama "was very loose and seemed to be enjoying himself," the White House pooler says as he passes along some lighthearted moments from the commander in chief.
"POTUS is a pretty good nickname, but let's face it, it's not as cool as 'Sting,'" Obama said of the musician. "I kind of wish I was called Sting. But I'm stuck with POTUS."
On Tom Hanks, the president said, "I did watch 'Big' last night. That's a great movie. I got kind of choked up."
On Lily Tomlin, "On her 1973 variety show 'Lily,' she and Richard Pryor performed a skit called Juke and Opal about two black folks hanging out in a diner. One reviewer called it, 'the most profound meditation on race and class that I have ever seen on a major network.' Which says something both about Lily and the major networks. That was ad-libbed by the way."
On Al Green, referring to the time he publicly sang a Green tune: "Look, no, I'm not going to do it again. That was like a one-time thing. It was a fluke. I can sing a little, but I cannot sing like Al Green."
And, also via the pool reporter, some of the notable attendees at today's event: Sam Waterston, Thomas Roberts of MSNBC, Kathleen Sebelius, Stephen Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Colin Hanks, John Kerry, Anthony Foxx, Nancy Pelosi, Les Mooves, Julie Chen, and Stephen Colbert.