The metro

I am from a small town and I have never ridden on a metro system without my uncle mike. This is a little scary. I would take out my video camera but I am scared like goin to Woodward.
I just got done however with a service project in the ghetto. Prolly worse than any area in my mission and we went door knocking giving out energy lightbulbs. I went with two strangers named iayelet and john. They were from the Maryland side of DC. They sort of reminded me of my aunt tammy's crowd but a little less critical of people well actually a lot less critical. I was glad I went with them because they had what they called the robot which was a tomtom gps and they guided me to the metro and told me how to use it. They also wished me luck with my art.

DC to it's fullest.

Throughout all of the activities there was so much to do I hardly had time to blog about it. But allow me to give a massive overview of the trip after the service project.

When I got into the mall area my first initiative was to visit as many museums as possible but everything in the museums I visited was so overwhelmingly amaizing that I took forever to go through the ones I went to.

I started with the freer gallery of art. I believe the features artists name was john mcneil whistler. There was something about the pallet of colors he used that really blew me away. It was so soft and desaturated in a way that extended the depth of plain out to the hemisphere. The rest of the gallery was filled with ancient Asian art. From sculptures to ink paintings and a 54 foot scroll of a hand painted panned landscape. I felt overwhelmed to be around such an amaizing history of art and such brillance in execution.

After that I went to the hirsshorne gallery of contemporary art and got a glimps of yoko Ono's wish tree. There were some really awesome inkjet prints and video installations and sculptures. I like how the new stuff requires a mastery of multiple mediums. The new scultper must paint and the painter must sculpt and the video artist has to do everything.

From there I caught up with my new bff celeste. We met on the bus ride there. And in the immortal words of michaelangelo in reference to April o'neil "I think I'm in luuuv!"
We briefly went to the African art museum. I feel about those sculptures the same way I feel about spike lee joints. (that I can stop pretending to like them since racism is over)
After that we tried to go to the haulocost museum but we were too late it was closed. So we decided to go eat. Now for some reason there are no visible eateries in the Washington DC most visited tourist attraction so we decided to take the metro rail towards where my good friends James and melinda Baird live. The whole time I told celeste that I was going to visit friends and that's all so after dinner when James came to pick us up she got scared away by his excedingly great age and hopped back on the metro to visit some of her own friends. At James and Lindy's we played a game and talked and then I had to fast track it back to the hotel for an interview with wtiu.

The interview went well. I thought that I rambled a little bit and I know I was specifically trying not to but overall it went well. So well that they decided to follow me around on inaugoration day.

Inaugoration day

We left for the inaugoration at 6:45 in the morning. We took our charter bus to the rfk stadium and then took a shuttle to the city. From there we were off and rollin like a hurd of turtles. It was celeste and I with the wtiu crew bill, shameka and chad. Bill reminded me of a slightly more a.d.d. 46 year old al doan. At least we sort of clicked in a similar way, which is sort of weird because he's actually four years older than both of my parents and has an hijo that is three years older than me and yet we were instant friends. Shameka was the reporter and was so jovial and out going that she could talk to absolutely anyone. She was most comfortable with talking to every police officer she could find and asking directions. Chad was also cool. He sounded exactly like David nosco but different personality. He was being mentored by bill.

The crowd was obese. There really were two million people there. It was so immense that tammy got lost, our group got seperated and by miracle we found Richard and his family. We were supposed to meet them by the lincoln memorial building but I went to the Jefferson by mistake. So we back pedalled to the Washington monument. We saw canadians for Obama, jamaicans for Obama, kenyans doing Obama dances, whtie people in shorts and bare foot. And we saw every black woman over 50 in their Sunday best fur coat. Bill even let me use his $60,000 hd camera that records on blueray disc and film some of the people. What?!?
It was about 11:30 at that time and almost ready for the main event. We decided that the WWII monument had the most visible and audible jumbotrons so that's where we went.
Obama nailed it. I was beginning to miss those inspiring speaches from the campaign days. And whether you were there or at home I doubt you had a dry eye. This is definately an "I remember where I was when..." moment.

After the speech we got caught up with shameka and celeste and tried to make our way over to the haulicost museum figuring that we could look around there while the crowd dispersed. Well we were wrong. It took almost an hour just to get there by foot and we were only a block and a half away. As were walking through the crowd celeste got a little ahead and I tried to catch up and this girl about eleven or twelve said "let him through he needs to get to his fiancé!" not girlfriend not wife not even friend but fiancé. (can you tell I'm saying fiancé in the fancy smarmy voice?)

So we got to the museum but it was closed again. So then we said well, we're hungry, let's go get something to eat. Yeah. Right. Trying to get out of there was like waiting for FEMA. There were people all over the streets in the museums on the floor. Kids were crying we were all cold couldn't find any thing to eat and they shut down all but one station of the metro. And I mentioned it before but tammy was still lost. (tammy's a nine year old girl that came with her grandpa) By this time shameka was not doin so hot. She was cold hungry and had to pee and thanks to the figures of jenna beasley there was one bathroom to every 6000 people. So we debated on wait til 6 for the shuttle to take us to our bus or wait in line for the metro. We found a fast moving line for the metro so we took it. There was finally light at the end of the tunnel. We met more canadians for Obama, a couple that said that this trip will be the one they tells their kids about. How interesting that people in other countries are so invested in our government. How was it that our president came to be the most powerful man in the world? How was it that I was born an American?

We finished the day off with a shuttle ride with mohammad the craziest morrocan I've ever met. Dude just yells about everything. And went to dinner with celeste and the wtiu crew. No cameras just friends.

Rest stop in illidelphia

I am at a rest stop in phillidelphia aka illidelphia. Its 4:23 am. This is a place I think I would like to visit sometime and meet danny devito. I am in the most gross bathroom only being comforted by a non bumpy toilet and also the song jenny I got your number. Who can forget the number to that girl, right? 8675309ieieion.

Obama time

At work a sorority approached our program with an opportunity for the kids to enter in an essay contest to go to Washington DC during the inaugoration. About six kids are going to come. I am on the bus waiting to leave. I'll be blogging and eventually vloging the whole trip. I'll also be twittering snippets of fun as well.

I'd like to take a moment as well to speak about my current thoughts and impressions about this historic time.

I followed very closely the election not only because of the historic meaning it held with women, African American, and Mormon canidates running but also because of the perilous economic situation surrounding our country. Becoming a fully self supported adult in this time is more than scary and doubtful. And I along with many Americans have felt frustration mixed with fear and also compassion for our nation. And we all feel invigorated with hope for our own recovery. And yet with this hope has lingered doubt with regaurd to the currant administration. The beautiful thing is that this is all about to change and we feel it is because of president elect Barack Obama.

Somebody answer this for me.

Why did the homeless guy with severe turrets decide that outside our house would be the perfect place to spend the night? It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Mom and Me

When I was a goodly four year old back in 1989 my mom and I finally broke out on our own as a single mother and child. We moved to the west side of Kalamazoo in these apartments that everyone just called "Village". I do have strong memories of times before we moved in there but my most vivid memories definitely start around this time. I helped my mom pick out the only car she ever owned independently of any other person. It was a red Geo Prism that topped out at 85 mph. (In '97 we tried to sell it in garage sale and the only offer we got was for 25 dollars.) Her boyfriend at the time helped her to install a tape player late in the winter of '89-'90. That summer I remember riding with her in the car with the windows down going to labamba to get burritos the size of my head and then to the tanning salon where I would flirt with the overly tan and blond employees. One named Tammy gave me a birthday present that year, it was a toy policeman set, with gun, cuffs and a badge. The number one jam that I always wanted to listen to that summer came from a Reggae singer named Shelly Thunder. If you asked me who my favorite singer was that summer I most likely would have said her (or Bonny Rait, we listened to a lot of her as well). And so for your listening and viewing enjoyment, here is Break Up by Shelly Thunder:

Shelly Thunder - Break Up
Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup

Eating like batchelor

Some people don't know this but the dude I call dad is really my step dad and I remember when my parents first got married he still ate like a batchelor but just had my mom make everything. The two meals that he ate the most were a bowl of Raman crushed into soup with ritz crackers and strips of fried balogna and the other meal was two hotdogs sliced the long way, lying side by side on a plate with a slice of cheese melted on top. Then he'd squirt ketchup and mustard on it, no bun. I tried it a couple times, not my thing. I only thought of that because my parents stopped eating meat recently. They still eat fish though. They say it's for health but all the fish they eat is fried.
The end.