Washington DC
Last week, I escorted my friend Meaghan back to Washington, DC because the Justice Department wants her she’s going back to Georgetown. We left early, setting the mood by listening to Sarah Vowell’s epic travelogue, Assassination Vacation, in which she, her sister, and her four-year-old nephew Owen set out across the United States to investigate the somewhat murky history behind the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. This was an excellent way to get psyched over the nation’s capitol (especially the possibility of seeing Garfield’s homoerotic memorial statue). When we arrived at Meaghan’s apartment on Connecticut Avenue, we immediately kicked shit into overdrive, hopping on the DC Metro and heading for downtown. The DC Metro is great; so clean, so diverse. Like a thing.
We hit up a bunch of the big sites, since DC is gorgeous at night. We saw the Washington Monument, the White House (sans Obamas sadly), but most importantly, we saw a high class DC prostitute order two hot dogs, a coke and peanut butter crackers from a street vendor, then get into a waiting red BMW. She was so different from an Atlanta prostitute. She was pretty in a way, all dolled up, not like the street trash we have down here with dat vagina hanging out dey cut offs. I think Meaghan was impressed but she didn’t say anything out loud.
After that, we headed off the World War II Memorial which is disgusting and covered in spiders. Due to the Memorial’s proximity to the malarial cesspit that is the Reflecting Pool and the fact that the Memorial is comprised of a bunch of clusters of columns, the whole thing is the perfect staging ground for the upcoming arachnid apocalypse. They thought we wouldn’t figure it out, but we figured it out!
Anyways, after that we headed over to the Lincoln Memorial. I can’t believe how long the Reflecting Pool is. Seriously. It was like walking through 7 city blocks of thick mosquito walls. Can we use some stimulus money to make it into a wave pool!?!?!? Lincoln was swell (even though he was covered in spiders, too) and the view from the Memorial is unparalleled. After that, we passed by the Vietnam Wall. It’s so interesting, so unassuming. When you start walking past it, it only comes up to your knees, but by the time you’re at the halfway point, it towers overhead. It’s like a metaphor… for war? Anyways, after that, Fritzenstein and I headed back to her apartment (after an eerie event in the metro in which a vacant train stopped and armed guards exited to survey the station… arachnid apocalypse? I think so) where we settled in for a night of Megashark vs. Giant Octopus (watch it if you haven’t).
The next day was spent at the Portrait Gallery, American Art Museum and Natural History Museum, all of which is covered in extensive detail in the facebook album to which I will post a link at the bottom of this post. So instead, let’s muse on DC.
D.C. is surprisingly unhip. I found it hard to believe. Surely, as the nation’s capital, it should have the best of all parts of the country. Ennnh! Wrong. Though thoroughly enjoyable, DC has very little edge. Seriously, all the guys looked like Clark Howard. It was actually kind of nice. It lacks the pretension of New York City and even of Atlanta. Though I love both cities, it was nice to see a populace so… modest, even if the eye candy was kind of feh. The city is also overrun with Obama merchandise, even if most of it is half off these days. I imagine that the price of Obama merch is a pretty good indicator of his popularity with the people.
That night, Meaghan had a meeting at Georgetown so we headed down to the college. While she discussed academic bullshit or whatevs, I wandered around the suburb. It kind of… well, sucked. Georgetown is extremely preppie, the main drag adorned left and right with Aldo, Banana Republic, Club Monaco, Abercrombie and Fitch, etc. etc. The people were very homogenous, moreso than the general population. I wandered around aimlessly in search of an independent coffee shop, eventually settling on a Barnes and Noble where I picked up a copy of Heeb and saw this awesome picture of Roseanne:
After that, Fritz and I had dinner at this place called Bangkok Bistro. I ordered the Jungle Curry, a curry so hot, it made me an atheist. After that, we started the loooong trek back to her apartment where I learned that though Meaghan had insisted that her cat showed affection by drooling on you, in reality, he suckles on your pajama pants leg because he is a FREAK.
The next morning, I awoke in agony, my journey around Georgetown taking a physical (as well as mental toll) on my leg (and brain). Thus, we decided to drive downtown to check out the sites. Now, driving in DC sucks because they have these things called circles. A circle is just like a roundabout, except that they manage to cram about six traffic lights into the circumference of each circle, just to ensure that it takes FOREVER to get through the mother fucking intersection. Anyways, after getting relatively lost, we found a good parking space near the Library of Congress. We headed in to the building (which is gorgeous) and stole the President’s Book of Secrets checked out Thomas Jefferson’s private collection (which only proved how big of a nerd he was). After a quick stop at the Supreme Court (good news, we got rid of abortion!), we headed over to the Capitol to try and find the uberfaggy Garfield monument.
To our surprise, we found a large gathering of people on the Capitol lawn, awaiting the public memorial service for Ted Kennedy. Not ones to forgo history, Meaghan and I camped out to see the shebang. Of course, being planned by Congress, the whole event didn’t get started until about two hours late. We were surrounded by annoying kids who screamed while playing the Geography game and some bitch behind us who asked if we were going to stand in front of her when the actual ceremony started Meaghan and I almost caved in and left, but by the end, it was worth it, because we got to see some obscured coffin in the back of a hearse. Hhhhh.
After that we got really lost.
Then we headed to a housewarming party.
We got lost on the way.
But once we were there, we had a great time! Meaghan’s friend were a nice, diverse crowd of white, grad students in the English program. Seriously though, they were a delight to hang out with and exactly the sort of thing to convince me that, despite my previous misgivings, Georgetown students were not bland, preppie blah-blah faces.
The next morning I headed back to Atlanta. I had a lovely time in DC, though I do regret not getting a chance to really experience the nightlife. Therefore, I won’t completely condemn this city. Not yet.
I took a lot of pictures and planned to write a more engrossing, interactive blog post. Unfortunately, Flickr’s being a bitch and tumblr kind of sucks when it comes to posting pictures so allow me to present this incredible Washington DC Facebook Album! You don’t need to be on Facebook to enjoy it and it has waaaaaay more of my musings and snarkiness than this blog post did. Enjoy!
