"So what did you do for Independence Day?"
"Oh nothing special, just stayed home and watched a movie. It's not like we live close to various monuments, a big fireworks show, free concert or anything cool like that. Besides, everyone knows that liberals secretly hate America."
Well I'd rather not deal with that and the ensuing feelings of loserdom that would result from such an exchange. Besides, at the last liberal conspiracy meeting in between plotting the downfall of the family and creating a government run dystopia, we promised to do a better job of keeping the Anti-Americanism under wraps. (Of course I kidd, liberals aren't anywhere near organized enough for any meaningful conspiracy. Oh, organized liberals, I crack myself up). Anyways, we had sufficient motivation to escape from our hermitage and hit the town for one day. After a few minutes of google searching we found that there was a concert at the south lawn of the Capital building right before the fireworks began, and as two things are better than one we decided that was the destination for us.
But, before undertaking such a great journey we had to be all prepared with a giant duffel bag of very important things we could not survive a few hours without. It all seemed very essential. Of course knowing that Zach would have to haul the giant bag from our shoebox apartment to the metro (about a mile and a half) and then from Union station to the Capital building may have influenced my decision making. And uh, I may possibly have added to his burden a little bit as I felt inclined to take the "scenic route" up to the metro. But even with the heavy load and the heat and the humidity we managed to make it up to the metro in decent time. Enough time to stop off at Whole Foods and gather a lovely picnic. I had visions of lovely baguettes with bits of cheese, fresh grapes and strawberries and other elements for a picture perfect picnic. Of course, other people must have had the same idea as whole foods was very much picked over. So Subway was substituted. Much less picturesque, but still quite tasty.
A quick metro ride and we were downtown. I don't think we've been downtown since Zach's birthday in the beginning of June, and up in our pretentious, suburbanesque corner of DC we tend to forget how cool this city really is. Seriously, everything is covered in marble and trying so hard to masquerade as a classic 500+ year old building. Not to mention the seemingly endless statues of men on horseback or dramatically holding an iron piece of paper. Also, as an added bonus, finding our way to the Capital building was rather easy. Being the biggest thing around all we really had to do was look up, and walk in the direction of the giant dome.
Finding the Capital was easy, but actually getting inside was a little more challenging. Zach and I thought we had left plenty early. The fireworks were set to start at 9:15pm, with the concert beginning at 8pm, and gates opened at 3pm. We arrived a little after 4pm, and were greeted with a long line which we shuffled forward in for about an hour. Once we arrived the end of the line the slow movement made a little more sense as every person was being scanned by mettle detectors and each bad was being hand searched. Not that the bag check was particularly thorough, I'm sure I could have hid some C4 or something in a hidden pocket if I was so inclined. But hey, the appearance of safety is all that really matters, and we were just happy to be out of that line and ready to lounge about for a few hours until the show started.
After the long wait in line I was less that thrilled to find that the lawn was already quite stuffed, especially any area that had a view of the stage. I didn't quite believe that the prime seating could really and truly be all full, and so I dragged the tired Zach and the giant bag around for a while, before ultimately ending up in the very same place we had first tried. It was still a decent spot and wasn't too crowded (yet). So we proceeded to settle in for the next 3 hours. Reading material and people watching more than provided enough entertainment.
Of course, as entertaining as books and people can be, we were quite happy when the concert started. Especially since they had raised up a big old jumbo tron on a crane, so we could actually kind of sort of see what was going on. And oh we were so glad we got to see what was going on. You see, like most free community concerts, and especially for ones in our nations capital, the concert had to be absolutely unoffensive to just about everyone. And so the headliners of the night were the great Barry Manilow and the Sesame Street Muppets. And as slightly ashamed as I am to admit it, I really enjoyed both of them. Manilow is just so infectious and happy to be there, that you kind of get swept up with him. And he is especially awesome when he's trying to be sexy, and you see this old, white guy shaking his hips with a touch of bedroom eyes. Oh Manilow, you try so hard.
But as awesome as the Manilow was, the best part of his performance was this little kid a few feet away from us who was seriously rocking out. He was shaking and grooving with everything he had and even threw in some classic disco moves. As a close second was an adorable Hispanic couple next to up who got all snuggly and cute during the slow songs. They also apparently own a hotel in Mexico. I know this because before they left early the husband introduced himself, pitched the hotel (which apparently makes really good fish?) and gave us his business card. It was loud and he had a bit of an accent so I only understood about half of what he said, and mostly just smiled and nodded. I really hope I didn't promise or agree to anything crazy. A little random, but still fun. And hey, a Caribbean Mexican vacation could always be fun. And the hotel really does look gorgeous. However, cute as they were, the award for best PDA of the night goes to the middle aged couple who totally started making out, complete with a sitting dip and the accompaniment of their preteens moans and complaints. Ah, old people love/lust.
Much fun as people had rocking out to Manilow (well, as much as you can rock out to Manilow) the Muppets were the real stars of the night. I mean they even got introduced by the President. And everyone loves Sesame Street and will happily cheer and sing along. Sesame Street really should be involved in more parts of life, it just makes everyone smile and teaches valuable lessons about how C is for cookies, and we should all love trash (reduce, reuse and recycle anyone?). Some other people sang and did a very nice job (well not so much Aretha Franklin, but shes so old and iconic that it doesn't really matter), but really Manilow and Sesame Street were the highlights.
With the genuine and somewhat unexpected fun of the show, I was rather excited to just lay back and watch the fireworks explode in blaze of beautifulness all over the sky. Yah, not so much. Not only is the Capital lawn at a funky angle from the fireworks, there were also many trees that worked wonderfully at providing some much appreciated shade earlier in the day but were less appreciated for their fireworks blocking. We tried to join the crowd struggling for a decent view between the trees, but we only got a few colorful glimpes. Very pretty glimpses, but not quite what I had hoped for.
I suppose all's well that ends well. Since we couldn't really see the fireworks Zach and I wormed our way through the crowd and headed back towards Union Station in the hopes of beating the crowds. It actually worked fairly well. The station filled up quickly, but as it was one of the first stops in DC that woudl be used by the fireworks viewers the train was mostly empty when we boarded so we actually managed to get a seat. a seat for which we were very grateful for everytime we pulled into a station packed to the gills and saw people struggling to fit into a car that I wouldn't have beleived could possibly hold anyone else. Even from the relative comfort of our seat cocoon, we were quite glad to get out of there, go home and collapse into a happy pile of goo. All in all it was a good day. And now for the obligatory pictures!
