Air & Space Museum

I didn't really see this museum for 2 reasons.
1) I'm not really into planes, wars, or planes associated with wars.
2) The Smithsonian decided to put the most popular items of the most popular museum (American History Museum) into the second most popular museum. Also, they decided to put the best Imax films and theme park like rides into the same museum. So, there were about a trillion people inside.

And every single person had one of those giant flashbulbs on each camera, and everyone had to use the flash bulb, so there was no direction to turn without being blinded. Oh and the american history exhibit had a line longer than the iphone buying line, and the bathroom had a huge line, and there was no place to go that didn't have a huge line. Except for the gift store which spanned two stories. So I spent most of my 1hr museum tour in the gift store.

Some rockets including Jupiter.

A trillion people.

Wright brothers plane. Note: this room had the largest concentration of children/flashbulbs.

Other things not posted: Sputnik, Apollo space craft pieces, prototype of the Hubble and Mars Rover, various war planes and missiles.

Unrelated...I told you I'd redo some of my shots. Oddly enough, the sculpture is now blue instead of red...

Folklife Festival

The Smithsonian has taken over the Mall with its Folklife Festival. It runs this weekend and next. This year's focus is on the roots of Virginia, the Mekong River, and Northern Ireland. I plan to check this out in more detail next weekend, but I had to walk through it on my way to the Air/Space Museum.

It's like a giant arts and craft festival, only focused on specific areas of the world. You can get food from various regions...Mekong had thai and chinese food and Ireland supplied smoked salmon and cold cut platters. The food actually comes from local D.C. restaurants, so it's not really good, overpriced, and I'm not sure it really represents each region. The Museum also brings in dancers, craftsmen, cooks and musicians from each area. I think it's a good educational thing for kids.

Virginia's local items included border collies + goats, and the people who sing acapella on the subway for money...they performed on stage.

Shot of Mekong/Virginia border.
Smithsonian Castle.


On my way to the air/space museum. I got pretty close to the capitol, will check that out later. You can see all the people just sweltering on the benches.

Library of Congress

I actually took an official tour of the Library. It's the only way to see the main reading room, which is huge and beautiful. The Library also had an exhibit of modern Japanese prints (reproduced from woodblock). I'd like to collect prints like those one day.

Shot of the inside of the library, looking up. I stopped trying to cut people out of my pictures, I think sometimes people give a measure of scale and perhaps character.

Ceiling.


Most of the walls and ceilings have these Italian inspired paintings, done by American artists. The inscriptions are all in English, and the paintings honor American writers. It's nice to be able to read all the stuff on the paintings for once, but I think I prefer the mystery of a foreign language.

This morning I went to the ACS Annual Supreme Ct Review. I mainly went b/c I wanted to see what the national press club looked like inside (modest). The room was packed with incoming second year law school students. The panel was really impressive, the guy who writes SCOTUSblog was there, Tim Goldstein. He's so incredibly smart and articulate. You can see clips of him and others on the ACS blog @ http://www.acsblog.org/

I also went to a meeting on the new FCC rules at Latham/Watkins w/ another super law firm (Wiley). We sat at what must be the longest conference table in the world, and pigged out on free lunch, while the firms' associates stared at us in disgust. Everyone hated us actually, we were the crazy privacy people trying to overturn the entire industry, and they were the ones representing the carriers. We may be crazy, but I don't see why you need to password protect your bathroom when your office is on the 13th floor.

This weekend...I plan to work!

Baltimore

My workplace remembered that I'm a science major, so they sent me to Johns Hopkins hospital today to do some research. Which meant I got to go to Baltimore.

My coworker and fellow science major drove us....first we stopped for Starbucks. I got a Raspberry Mocha which is damn good. Then about an hour later, we arrived at the hospital...

After printing about a thousand pages, we went with her friend to get Indian food. A "10 minute walk" turned into 30+, in hundred degree weather with high humidity, but I got to see town (not downtown).

On the way I saw a few signs like this:

And on the way back, people like this told me to stop taking pictures, so I did.

My coworker gave me a driving tour of downtown and the waterfront...it's really pretty, but we didn't stop b/c it was about a hundred degrees. Baltimore as a city has super wide streets, and there aren't a whole lot of cars or people on the streets. 25% of the buildings are boarded up or abandoned, so there's these wide open spaces of nothingness. It's kind of dead. And there are adult oriented stores everywhere.

I came home on Marc (maryland train) from Penn Station, which isn't as nice as the Penn station in NYC. In fact, right outside, you can see one of the examples of boarded up buildings....this is the old post office.

My World - Dupont Circle (day)

I took a walk during lunch today, in 90 degree heat with high humidity, and happened to have my camera. Dupont's supposed to be the gay district/night life center in DC. It's full of bars, boutique stores and little cafes. I tried to capture it and the essence of DC in the day time at least.

Chipotle and Gazuza, the bar/lounge where we had happy hour once. I used to think DC had a complete lack of nightlife, so they had to glorify chipotle by attaching a bar to its roof. Of course I learned that's not true, but still, it's an odd image, fast food chain by day, ultra hip lounge by night.

The actual circle in Dupont; where the elderly, homeless, and tourists come out to "enjoy" the weather.

I walk by this display on the way to work every day. I tried to capture the fast paced ever changing nature of the area, in the reflections on the window.

And I eat here, at Cosi's, for lunch once a week. It's a sandwich and salad chain a bit like Panera but better that's taken over every corner in town. This is the one next to the KPMG building. I had to walk by two others (running errands) to arrive here.

My world part 1

I've been wandering around, taking many many more pictures than what I put here, trying to distill the city into a set of 20 photos or so. I figure I'll print them out and make a collage one day. Well, my camera's not really functional, and I don't have a great photographic eye, so 20 may be a goal too large.

Pictures from around eastern market....

Hirshhorn Museum

Joseph Hirshhorn was this really rich guy who really liked modern art so he went around the world and bought up stuff that he liked. I think that's the way you should run a museum, fill it with things you like. The downside is sometimes you end up with stuff that's not really famous.

Anyhow, his museum is a bit too modern for me, in that it's got works by actual living artists. They're exhibiting Wolfgang Tillman (sp?), photographer, on the entire second floor. He likes to focus on the absurdities in news articles, military people and weapons (but not in a related manner), and photograph photographic paper.

Don't worry, the museum still has Calder. I'm going to go back and redo this shot (god knows I have the time), but you get the idea:
And Roy Lichhoweveryouspell's brushstroke.

U Street

My tour book tells me U-Street is being revitalized and is the up and coming new hip district for young African Americans. It also tells me there's a lot of good food.

Well, I don't like to go into cafes alone, and it's worse when the cafes are ethiopian, full of ethiopians, and full of people who all know each other. So I now understand why people go to chain stores when they travel...you can at least eat alone and no one bugs you about it.

Then I went off U-Street to capture the character. In essence it can be distilled into KFC and Remy Martin:

Colorful and ghetto:

And houses that look beautiful on the outside, but then you realize they all have serious bars on their windows and are smashed together (more so than usual).

OC Trip

Went to visit K. yesterday out in Newport. K, who lived in our dorm at Cal, is a very nice and very smart guy, who probably thinks to much and is too nice for his own good. He lives in a gated community that has a gate-man and a guest list - sort of like clubbing for old rich people.
It may be no Kodo, but Kobe Bryant lives only a couple miles away. Apparently Kobe's house is in a gated community AND has its own gate. K.'s house has no supplemental gate, but it does have maseratis in the front and K. shops at the same supermarket as Kobe.
Headed up to Long Beach to try Alondra Hot Wings, which I'd heard had excellent wings. They were certainly better than the local place, although I should have gone for Suicide rather than X-tra Hot.
Alondra's other specialty is deep-fried twinkies. Here is what Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has to say about deep-fried twinkies:

And in the South we don't just eat and eat lots of things, but we fry everything before we eat it. Now folks let me explain something to those of you north of the Mason-Dixon line--when I say we fry everything, we fry everything. At the Arkansas State Fair, you can not only get the fried onion rings, fried french fries, fried corn dogs, but you can get a fried Twinkie®. [laughter]. Yes as if a Twinkie® isn't bad enough for you, we take the Twinkie®, we dip it in batter, and then fry it, put it on a stick and put powdered sugar on top of that. [laughter]. Plus we charge you $3 for it so a 30 cent Twinkie®--3 bucks. Not a bad deal--for the people selling it. You're not into fried Twinkies®, we got fried Oreos®. Same thing. Take the Oreo®, dip it in batter, fry it, put powdered sugar on it. Now largely we eat that way because we like it. The other reason is quite frankly, and I didn't know this until I was [inaudible] is we eat that way because most of us grew up poor enough that you take the thinnest, least expensive cuts of meat and if you batter it and fry it and pour gravy on you can feed a lot more people with a lot less basic food. It's that simple. But it was also killing us. And I realized that we had to make some changes.
http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/huckab082705spt.html

He's lost 120 lbs in the last two years, so I guess he knows what he's talking about. On the other hand, deep fried twinkies are damm good.
Next, headed to the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point for more desert. No pictures of this, but the lounge/restaurant was at the top of a cliff overlooking a wide sandy beach. They were having a surfing contest below, but someone had forgotten to order the waves, so a swarm of wetsuited surfers bobbed in the water, occasionally popping up on a weak swell. Had a warm chocolate cake with ice cream that cost $9 and was nowhere as good as the twinkie.

Next to Angel Stadium, where the Angels were taking on the Pirates. Hat day!
From our seats we had a great view of the waterworks in the outfield, and the Ponda in the background.
The Angels display the world series trophy they won in 2002 behind glass in the lower concourse.
It was getting late by the end of the game, but we headed to the Irvine Spectrum Center to get K. some baseball cards, and also had a quick snack at Tea Station.
Didn't get back to Muffy until almost 1am - long day, but a good trip.

Around Town

Chinatown gate:
It's not really a Chinatown at all, just a fancy gate. The Verizon center is just next door and the portrait gallery across the street.

I walked really far to the Washington Marina today. This is the view from the Mandarin Oriental. The crummy rooms get a view of the railroad and a deserted parking lot. The dept of agriculture, which spans about 20 blocks, is right next door.

Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum

Went to the National Portrait Gallery. It's absolutely huge, four floors full of stuff, and amazing. They have this great Saul Steinberg exhibit, that unfortunately ends on Sunday. He's famous for this:

I saw a version at the museum thats not as complete, in black and white, and reverses the direction so that it looks from the pacific into new york, and I liked that version a lot better...

The Museum also showed me that Georgia O'Keefe can paint more than flowers: (full size)

It's also got a great collection of American art, which is quintessentially American - overdramatic and romanticized. They have portraits of all the presidents up through Clinton, and a good collection of paintings of Native Americans (not by Native Americans) as well as a collection of modern american art. The current folk life exhibit is also uniquely American, and either very good or not really art, hard to tell.

They also have the Calder fish.


Civil war stuff: (I combined a sculpture and a painting)


AND a painting entitled "View from Oakland."


The museum is so big I didn't get to see all of it, but it's easy to get to so I'll probably check the rest out later.

Edited to add: I also want this picture.

Monuments

If you recall, I visited the monuments last fall. I'm going to say it right here: the pictures from the fall are a lot better. And the monuments, in person, look better in the fall.

I really don't need to see them again, but today's supposedly the last nice day of the entire summer (80ish w/ no humidity), so I thought I needed to go see the monuments in case I suddenly regret not going later this summer.

Since I went before, I tried to take pictures from the same angles. They really weren't that effective, because 1) there's a trillion more people; 2) it's blindingly bright; and 3) the monuments seem more cared for in the off-season. I've also not posted any of those pictures =P

So...DC in the Summer! I put the pix in full size so you can see all the details, avoiding the walk yourself!

Lincoln Memorial: Millions of people.
Korean Memorial: The one angle I didn't get in the fall.

Vietnam memorial: Millions of people, higher angle than last time.

Washington Monument: Not overcast, straight forward angle.


WW2 Memorial: Pacific side rather than Atlantic.


Jefferson Memorial: I didn't go...it's kind of a walk...this is as close as I got. But really, all the commercial shots I see are from this angle, so I'm thinking no one actually goes up to the memorial.

long ass day

Went to my first hearing yesterday, before the senate commerce, energy, and space committee. It's in a beautiful room with gilded walls and chandeliers. This hearing was pretty much a housekeeping matter though, so only a few senators showed up. Mr. Intertubes was there, only for a bit. I figured out, hearings are kind of pointless b/c everyone submits written testimony first and the senators write what they want to say, so it's just people sitting and reading to each other, and no one really listens to the answers of any of the questions b/c people have already made up their minds.

Then we went to a happy hour with free food/drinks courtesy of the ACS (see ACS story below). I remembered again, why I don't like to go out. The bar had me fooled for a bit b/c it didn't charge cover, none of the places here do. But...they do sell $12 drinks, everyplace is insanely crowded, and the lack of parking, just not my thing. Oh, and I like my coworkers, but do you really want to see them all day, go out with them all night, and then see them again the next morning? I think that could get old fast.

(ACS Story) I interviewed with the ACS - american constitution society- once. They were openly hostile to me because my school doesn't have an ACS chapter. Not that many schools do. So why pick someone for an interview? Anyhow, I'm a bit resentful b/c my summer is speckled with ACS sponsored events, and (maybe this is my perception) every time I go I need to tell them what law school I'm at and then they're kind of rude to me, and then I have to eat all their free food to make up for it.

Detour - NYC Part III

We got dinner at Per Se. If after clicking on the link you have no idea what I'm talking about, well, that's probably better for the world. Anyhow, it's a nine course meal that includes a cheese dish, a chocolate dish, and you get to take home some macaroons. And they were really nice about substituting in a dish I couldn't eat, they just removed the oysters and reassembled a new dish with the remaining ingredients.

Here's a dark pic of the front of the restaurant. Our reservations were at 10pm, so this is around 1am.

I get really uncomfortable in fancy restaurants because I don't know what to do...but this guy didn't have that problem. We didn't get the same dishes, but that second oyster and caviar dish was the one they modified for me. We also had lamb and sea bream instead of the tuna and the veak, and melon sorbet and a chocolate mousse type thing instead of their desserts. Everyone there at 10pm looked vaguely foreign.

Afterwards we went looking for the entrance to Masa's which is on the same floor, but couldn't find it. I'd like to eat there one day when I'm super rich...

The next day I checked out the Natural History Museum. Saw the exhibit on mythical creatures. By far one of the best natural history museums ever, I'd rank it up there with the one in LA but even larger.

And then I took a 6hr bus ride back home...where today it's 95 degrees with 60% humidity.