I think I like this city

Nothing I ever create could be complete without some spooktacularly foreboding religious imagery.


Or without a little smirk to undermine it. Confessions by appointment? Let's see if I can squeeze one in if I bump up lunch at the Club...

St. Patrick's, ladies and gentlemen (New York's is bigger)

So here's what's up, I've seen a handful of shows since I've gotten to D.C., and I have to say I'm beginning to like this city more and more. There's a lot going on and it seems like there's a lot of opportunities. If my descriptions of what I've seen don't live up to that comment about liking the city, don't think much of it. I would compliment myself on having an astute, critical eye. Now allow me to tear into this shit.

The first thing I attended was a sit-in of a spacing rehearsal (when the actors are fit the blocking they've learned in a studio space onto the stage with the full set for the first time) at the National Shakespeare Company. The production was of The Alchemist by Ben Jonson. I found this opportunity through Terry's theater, and I assumed it would be attended by a few local actors interested in seeing a professional rehearsal - I cannot understand what else anyone might get out of attending one of these. To my surprise, however, the theater was packed with wealthy D.C. dilettantes. The people on my right were complaining about their seats, of all things. We're watching a slow, tedious rehearsal, not a performance, my lovelies. And those on my left were getting upset when actors missed certain brand new pieces of blocking. Believe me, it's not so easy keeping blocking in mind while reciting memorized classical text on a new set in front of 200 gawking porpoises. And, much to my wonderment, the voyeurs thought everything the director said was a joke. Before the first run, he asked the lead actor if it would be easier for him to enter if the sliding door was already open. The crowd went wild. Not a joke, crew. Brain-dead white collars aside, the experience was a good one and certainly made me want to see the production, unfortunately I'll be in NYC by the time it opens.

That same afternoon I went to see an adaptation of A Picture of Dorian Gray at the Roundhouse in Bethesda, which had been written up in several papers as being graphic, explicit, and crossing every line. It lived up to all of that. Much of it's graphic nature was effective, though some of the violence was over-the-top if not gimmicky. What really fell flat for me was the depiction of the portrait itself. Even early on, it's built up for half of a scene to be the artist's finest work, but when revealed to the audience, is little more than an apt depiction of Gray. Of the three subsequent reveals of the portrait as it ages grotesquely, one of them fires on all cylinders and is very effective but the others don't live up to the status granted them by the text.

Later that night I met a friend at a concert. He works at an old folks home now, which he loves because, as he puts it, "old folks don't have stress: all their deadlines are passed." The concert, unbeknown to me, was part of the Sonic Circuits Festival; a tour of sound artists that I would hesitate to call musicians, and perhaps they would too. The first duo made me want to die. The second act, one man, a keyboard, and a laptop, was more listenable, but I suspected he was just playing Minesweeper up there. The third group (and the last I saw) was a group called Health, from California, whose contagious and unflagging energy pulled me in despite their noise-rock sound, which is not my thing. In the end I had a very enjoyable time. Imagine Bjork singing backup for Metallica doing island covers of Animal Collective songs.

Finally, just this evening I went to see Black Pearl Sings! at Ford's Theater (where Lincoln was killed, yes that Ford's Theater), a show that should not have an exclamation mark, with a new friend, one of Terry's fellow apprentices, Rachel, who will forever remember me as the person who can astonishingly drink a 20 oz. pop in one sitting. The story was about a music historian in the 1930's trying to document old folk songs ("every time someone dies a library is destroyed," or something, she says. That probably shouldn't be in quotation marks. Oh, well. Sorry, playwright Frank Higgins) and finds a veritable gold mine in the incarcerated "Pearl" Johnson. Much of the dialogue was awkward: both characters talked a lot about what they wanted and laid exposition like floor tiles. However, both women gave exceptional performances and God damn can Tonya Perkins sing!

Music =
City by Billie the Vision & the Dancers
something by Health (check them on YouTube - seeing them is all the fun)
something by Faust (the headliners of Sonic Circuits, whom I missed)

Today, TBWCYL said to go without addictive substances and, while I did have coffee and soda, I refrained from crack, meth, heroin, and cocaine.

Rock over Atlanta, rock on Chicago
Beggin' Strips, Dogs don't know it's not bacon.

Arlington Nat'l Cemetery

A few days ago, I had the chance to tote my computer around Arlington in my shoulder bag. Pictured below is the view from Kennedy's memorial. If you have eagle vision, you can see the Washington monument against the pale sky.


And here is RFK's marker - always the modest one.


And no cemetery would be complete without a Grecian amphitheater.


The disturbing parts of the cemetery were the vast open plots of land; eerie harbingers of wars to come and future dead soldiers. God willing, may this ground never be broken.

A dark post for TBWCYL. Listen to The Cemetery by Architecture in Helsinki.

Regarding the ironic appropriateness of the last post's heading

The last post was titled "Delusions of Adequacy" as a reference to my book (TBWCYL) which wanted me to write the iconic opening line of my great novel today, offering such examples as "Call me Ishmael" and "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." And while I do not have a first line for my book, I have long held a title (Delusions of Adequacy) for my memoir. Ironically, the title on that post implied a disturbed dissatisfaction with the American government, which may well be true, but I'm not about to ramble about it on my blog. How passe.

But, to be sporting, here's my shot at the first line for Delusions of Adequacy: The Life and Times of Ben Harpe:

"The day I was born, I had my whole life ahead of me."

And here's my band name and first album, while I'm at it:

Clamp Your Hands and Stop Your Feet! by the California Cash Refund

Delusions of Adequacy

Three vital things about DC

1. People carry themselves with some weird sense of importance but move with no meaning or urgency. Is this why political progress in America occurs so infrequently?

2. At Nationals' games, four dudes with giant fake heads made to look like the Mt. Rushmore presidents race around the ballpark (one is pictured above, dancing). Roosevelt's never won.

3. Outside the fence around the White House's national yard, there's a small monument reading, "point for the measurement of distances from Washington on highways of the United States," so prominently stationed, it's as if it's designed to trick non-English-speaking tourists into photographing themselves with it.

D.C. Continued

Thankfully, one of the common threads so far through my trip to Washington has been cute animals. This is important, and may be a sign. Pictured above is a bird that was hopping and playing in Detroit Metro Airport. Also, I called to a cat on a street and it came to me which I found very weird.


And then at a Washington Nationals game, I saw this owl.


Are owls the Nationals' mascot? No.

But unfortunately, Washington D.C. is not all cute animals and predatory birds. There's also scummy parks. This park, Meridian Park, features a prominent statue of James Buchanan who, next to Pierce, is the most immemorable president. The park became a haven for drug dealers in the 70s and 80s and has since become unofficially known as Malcolm X Park.

Here is a photo of the view from the top of the park.

On a clear day, you can see the tip of the Washington Monument over that office building in the back. This is why the French hate tall buildings.

Listen:
The Magnetic Fields - Washington D.C.

Hope I'm doing this frequently enough for you, mom.
Rock over DC, Rock over Baltimore.
Sara Lee baked goods. Nobody does it like Sara Lee.

The Heart of America('s Ego)

D.C., this is where it all goes down. Or, what goes down, as minute and occasionally as that happens, it happens here. I spent some time in the D.C. proper before meeting Terry (my lovely host) in Bethesda, MD for lunch/dinner meal. Pictured above are Joe Biden and Michelle Obama going for a stroll.

TBWCYL wants me to throw away something I like today, but since I'm traveling, I don't have much with me I could part with. SO, I'll find something I like on the Metro and throw that away.

Holler at my boy Terry, what a man.
Rock over Bethesda, Rock over D.C.
Kix cereal, kid tested, mother approved

The Great Peregrination

Let's All Go Change Our Lives Now Hooray!

I've been meaning to start this blog for a while but have been waiting for something interesting to pop up that might be worth writing about. Here's a little blip about who I am and why my life over the next year might be worth following. I'm a recent graduate of Kalamazoo College -- a small, Liberal Arts School in Southwestern Michigan -- having studied Theatre, Art, and Media Studies. So, I've been ready for four years to leap out of college and land in a sizzling pot of indefinite unemployment. Thus, more prepared than the average unemployed 2009 college graduate, I'm hoping to use this to my advantage. As long as no one's expecting me to get a job, I'm going to spend the next two months traveling across America, staying with friends and checking out 6 (maybe 7) of America's great cities (including one in Oregon - the one state with greater rate of unemployment than Michigan's), and capping it all off in Lawrence, Kansas for a laugh. My ultimate goal by the end of this trip is to pick a city and move there. In Planes, Trains, and Automobiles style, this whirlwind tour will get me back home just in time for Thanksgiving dinner with my horrifying specter of an 80's wife and three kids. This is particularly appropriate because I am a perfect cross between Steve Martin and John Candy (RIP John Hughes)

The other tasks I'll be 85%-heartedly undertaking this year are laid out in a book I was gifted for my high school graduation called This Book Will Change Your Life. It offers a task a day for a full year including take a pregnancy test, demand a free drink at a bar, and get a celebrity autograph (three randomly selected pages). I say 85%, because some of them are really asinine, like dig at the end of the rainbow, and others of them are simply rude, like cut in line. That's not what Johnsteve Cartin's all about. If it's immediately apparently life-changing, I'll throw it up on this blog here too.

And here's day 1 -- not life-changing, but I'll write about it today because it's the first. They offered 20 possible options for the day from do one press-up to nickname you genitals, both of which I'm sure we've all done. So I opted to do a striptease. Not life-changing, but I did learn a little something from it, so here's my advice to impart for your first striptease:

1. put music on (even if you can't dance, it'd be better than total silence, let alone sad little humming and dum-dum-dums).
2. clear enough room for yourself.
3. take your socks off ahead of time.

Laura, you didn't miss anything: it was a mess.

Well, I leave for Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM, so I'd better pack. But check back in, you can expect to see silly pictures, deep ruminations, and a list of tracks that would be in the video posts if I were able to upload video onto my computer. Here's today's:

Summer Days - Bob Dylan
Travelin' Man - Bob Seger
All I Want - Joni Mitchell
Ticket to Ride - The Beatles

This one's to Lo for the computer and D for the tech support.

Rock over Kalamazoo, Rock over Rochester Hills.
State Farm Insurance. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.