EXT. STAPLES PARKING LOT - DAY

AYSE is getting out of her car on the way to stock up on office supplies. She is wearing a neon hat.

Two twenty-something men are nearing AYSE'S car as they stroll toward the store entrance nearby.

MAN 1
(smiling, without breaking his stride)
Where'd you get that hat?

AYSE
(shrugs, smiles)
I don't know. Some thrift store.

MAN 1
(still walking)
I used to have a hat just like that back in Kansas to keep the ticks off my head.

The men continue on into the store.

Ayse wonders if neon has a biologically utilitarian function. The internet provides no answers.

END

President Barack Hussein Obama

Here is an inauguration day timeline:*

3:30 a.m. Wake up
4:00 a.m. Leave for metro
4:30 a.m. Arrive at the Mall. People are streaming in from all directions.
5:00 a.m. Find the correct line for my section. There appear to be thousands of people in line already.
5:00-8:00 a.m. Stand in the horrific cold waiting for checkpoints to open. Busloads of police from different states go by and the line balloons into dangerously condensed clumps in several places.
8:00 a.m. Security checkpoints open. Mad dash results in near trampling of a few old ladies just within my range of sight. The flow of people is sort of like L.A. traffic - a frenzied rush to close anything passing for a gap in traffic followed by a screeching halt when people inevitably close said gap. Repeat.
8:10 a.m. Am told I can't bring backpack in. Proceed to stuff everything into various pockets and bid farewell to the faithful rucksack.
8:15-10 a.m. Intensely compacted crowd politely jostles for the best vantage point. Sort of like a music festival, but with much more reticent and subtle shoving.
10:00-10:30 a.m. Various choirs sing. Very few people care.
10:30-11:00 a.m. The important people begin filing in.
11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Introductions, John Williams' composition, booing of both Bushes (in poor taste, in my opinion. I cringed), a glut of documentation - ceremony being incessantly filmed and photographed by audience, live television feed being broadcast through jumbotrons being filmed and photographed by audience., who in turn were being filmed and photographed by the press.
12:00 p.m. After a minor flub in the oath, Obama becomes president. See my facebook video for an idea of what it sounded like.
12:00-1:30 p.m. Great speech (although I do not think fiery oration is Obama's strongest suit), benediction (hilarious), unabashed frolicking by Capitol area crowd. People gleefully ran out onto the ice of the reflecting pond. At one point a circle of people joined hands and danced on the ice, ignoring the fact that it was audibly cracking beneath them. People climbed on equestrian battle statues and posed on the horses, etc.
1:30-4:00 p.m. Realize I can't leave the area of D.C. I happen to be in unless I wait hours or walk to Virginia to get on an already overloaded metro. I finally give up on the escape attempt, buy a hotdog and a hot chocolate and wander to the National Air and Space Museum.
4:00-4:30 p.m. Wait in line for the bathroom at the NASM.
4:30-4:40 p.m. Look unsuccessfully for a place to sit that is not the floor in the middle of an exhibit. Buy an IMAX ticket.
4:40-6:00 p.m. Sleep the sleep of the dead in the theater. Am awoken by the gentle shake of a museum employee informing me that the museum closed at 5:30.
6:00-7:00 p.m. Make my way home.
*times are approximate

Of course I went out that night. In spite of my near delirium it didn't take much arm twisting to convince me. I did elicit a promise from a bartender that he would make me an Irish coffee is I brought him the coffee, which was conveniently provided by a 7-11 down the street.

I will post photos on flickr soon. There are already a few on facebook, in addition to a video.

It's time

The city is electric. People are as kind to each other as they have been at each stage of the ever-increasing waves pouring into D.C., but tonight they walk with a purpose. They pack into the metro cars, pushing past people politely but with faces set. The CVS's of the city have become supply stations to those stocking up for tomorrow's journey into uncharted political territory - a singular moment in the history of this country and, to use that word so fervently co-opted by the Obama campaign, one of hope.

We know Obama is only one human being. We know he is set to inherit one of the most disastrous presidential legacies in recent memory. We know that we may have unreasonably high expectations of him, but know also that those expectations are only possible because he has renewed our belief in the comatose concept of integrity in politics.

As to the import of this particular inauguration, the editor of The Washington Post Magazine put it nicely:

"Any inauguration is significant, but one proving that we live in a nation where, when the chips were down, a candidate was judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, is a dream come true."

- Tom Shroder

Mall Standing, Silver

**I wrote part of this blog yesterday and part today, so the events described herein are from Friday, January 16th.**

My alarm rang at 7:30 today, in order to make it possible for me to be at Feinstein's office when inauguration tickets were available for pickup at 9 a.m. Instead, I turned the alarm off and woke up 3 hours later, ready to take an unreasonable amount of time to get dressed and out of the house, as per usual.

I hear there is some sort of logic to the street numbering/naming system in D.C., but I have yet to be convinced. I took a wrong turn down the wrong 2nd Street (there are two different 2nd Streets within a few blocks of D.C.'s Union Station), and spent an hour and a half wandering around in the bitter cold with firefighters shaking their heads in pity as they drove by. When I finally made it to the complex of Senate offices up the hill from the Hill, one of Feinstein's several J. Crew necktie-wearing aides handed me my ticket.

It's very pretty.

As an official representative of the U.S. branch of plebes, I was given a spot in the standing-only area of the mall just beyond the reflecting pool (see map below, Silver section). I was a little disappointed, but am trying to stop being such an ingrate. People are clawing each other for tickets. It's history, right? I won't lose fingers and toes, right? Please? God?

Hey! You know what else is annoying about being the official representative of plebes everywhere? Listening to your host's drunk roommates argue in loud whispers about whether or not they should have to move the 20 friends they brought home from a party to another floor referencing you loudly all the while, and then realizing (also out loud) that you must have heard them.

Regardless, Darrell has been unfailingly kind, and took me to a bar that could have possibly been built by my imagination in a parallel universe. The owner(s) of the place basically bought out the inventory of a bankrupt sideshow and put it all over the walls - six-legged baby goats, mummified pygmy merpeople, dead things in jars - all my favorites! Then they had actual performances from various traditional sideshow attractions like the human blockhead and a real live burlesque lady! She showed us her glittery boobs!

I think when I began this blog I had imagined it being a sophisticated and nuanced reportage of the D.C./Obama/Dawn of a New Era zeitgeist, but instead I will gripe about drunk people and talk about breasts. You're welcome.

The Man Who Wasn't There

...is the film I am currently watching as I fall asleep.

Today I woke up late and went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. The mall is littered with port-a-potties in preparation for Sunday's mega-super-star-studded variety show inauguration kickoff concert. Aside from the hilarious image of the Washington Monument rising from a chorus line of plastic toilets, it is surreal to see such architectural icons up close.

After the Smithsonian, Darrell and I were interviewed by a German reporter on the couch surfing experience. I am told we're one half of a feature on the extremes people are going to for the inauguration. We obviously represent the plebes, while the people who are paying $50,000 a night for their lodging represent the maximum bourgeoisie. The reporter actually asked me what I thought of that. "Aw shucks lady! I didn't know folks had that much money. That's curraayzeee! Yeeehooo!"

3110 13th

I have arrived.

The descent into the city was absolutely beautiful. City lights twinkled furiously as we skimmed the Patomic. Smooth landing. Short metro ride to my destination - 3110 13th Street, in Columbia Heights, the home of one Darrell Duane.

Darrell is a refugee from the world of engineering, living in a rambling 3-story house that used to be a 5-(insanely tiny)unit apartment building. He has a basement full of costumes, three couches generously offered up to the weary (and peuer) traveler via couchsurfing.com, and aspires in all sincerity to coach people in the art of communicating using the voice of their inner giraffe, rather than their inner jackal.

Tomorrow I must retrieve my inauguration ticket from Feinstein, figure out what exactly said ticket gives me access to, see as many museums as possible before they sink into the underlying swamp beneath the horde of inauguration revelers that is sure to show up at any minute and come up with a dinner menu for my host and his roommates that doesn't include any of the ingredients they loathe - onions, mushrooms and cucumbers so far. I haven't had a chance to ask the other three roommates yet.

Bars and many restaurants will be open until 4 a.m. in honor of our desire to drink in honor of our spanking new president.

Ah! Before I forget, here is a bit of Washington gossip (I'm so plugged in already) - in what I'm sure won't be the last of his tacky gestures, Bush refused to let the Obama family stay in Blair House. Blair is essentially the White House guest house and where the president-elect traditionally stays with his or her family in the weeks before the inauguration.

Instead, the Obama's are staying in a hotel downtown, where their security is wreaking havoc on DC's already abysmal traffic. The family is scheduled to move into Blair House on Friday, staying for mere days before moving into the White House, all during the Obama girls' first few weeks of school. Bush's excuse for the slight? The former Australian prime minister came to visit for one night.

Way to go out in style, G-dub.