On Saturdays, I get up early and go to my acting class downtown. Since I'm out and about, I go visit some of the sites of this great Zoo on the Potomac. Last week, I went to the National Museum of American History, which has just re-opened after a slick renovation. This week, being the week of the inauguration, I decided to visit the Constitution at the National Archives, just to make sure that it was still there.
Normally, I would just hop on the Metro at Eastern Market and hop off at the National Archives stop. That's the beauty of mass transit. Saturday, however, the weather was arctic cold but clear so I decided to walk. Also, Frederick Douglass, for a time, lived between Eastern Market and the Capitol, so I planned to cruise by that house on my way.
Maybe I should have looked up the address first. I couldn't remember if he had lived on A St. or First St. or near the intersection of A and First or if I had completely mis-remembered and he lived on E Street.* In any case, I wandered around Capitol Hill until my fingers and toes became numb and didn't find his house. I decided to return next with with an actual address and turned toward the Archives.
On the way to see the tattered remnants of our founding documents, I passed the Capitol and took the opportunity to see the inauguration site up close and report on the important things like this:
The toilets where the Beautiful People, sitting in the ticketed seats, will relieve themselves.
In a lovely little "cycle of life" moment, I found this truck sitting just behind the beautiful people's outhouses:
This company probably caters to the inauguration roadies.
Circling around to the Mall side of the Capitol, I found where the Beautiful People will sit:
Notice that they have actual chairs? Notice also that they have a fence around those chairs. To ensure that only beautiful people get into this restricted area requiring tickets, the Inaugural Powers-That-Be have caged the Beautiful People into their areas.
Oprah will probably be crying on some random rich donor's shoulder in that area, while Samuel L. Jackson says, "We have a mutha fuckin' black man in the mutha fuckin' White House!" That's what I really want to see.
As you can see from that last picture above, the Beautiful People can see the swearing in without craning their necks or crushing their neighbors or sitting on their boyfriend's shoulders.
You know, I would love to see Oprah sitting on Samuel L. Jackson's shoulders, waving her arms and shouting "Obama, Marry Me!" while throwing tye-dyed underclothing at the stage.
I digress. Here is a picture of the swearing-in site:
Here is a blurry close up. That's where the magic will happen.:
You know, maybe Oprah should sit on Magic Johnson's shoulders. I'm sure that he's taller than Jackson. Plus, he could give her some tips on throwing that underwear. **
Just in case the Beautiful People do, in fact, have to crane their necks to see the actual inauguration, the Inaugural Powers-That-Be have also provided them with wide screen movie broadcast screens (I think that is Sheryl Crow in red there):
If you are facing the Capitol, this screen lies just to the right of the seats. It may be located in the only place where you can see the actual inauguration better than you can the broadcast version.
Still, you know that more people will be twisting and turning to see the screen rather than to see the event itself. People tend to think things are more real if they are on t.v.. I wonder if that is more so for people who actually appear on t.v., or if they would just be critiquing the production values on the screen.
Only the Beautiful People can sit in caged seats with the bad views of the broadcast screens. The Somewhat Attractive People get to stand here:
This is a little further back on the Mall, behind the oval reflecting pond. As you can see, the Somewhat Attractive People are also caged in.
They also get these nifty barricades that each have a gate, a crawl space, and a platform for police to observe. I'm sure that they are just there to form a little hallway around the perimeter of the Somewhat Attractive People yard so that they can get to the Somewhat Attractive People toilets:
The Somewhat Attractive People also have a guard tower overlooking their yard:
In this picture, you can see that the Turf Restoration Project has been abandoned, the chain fence removed, and the already restored turf left to fend for itself under the feet, urine, and garbage of the Inaugural Crowd: 
The Somewhat Attractive People get a big screen, too:
This will be their view of the actual proceedings, so the screen might come in handy:
The Not-So-Beautiful to Downright Ugly People get similar views, but without the cages. They do get big screens and guard towers. Port-o-Lets, too.
Me? Here is where I will be sitting: 
That would be in Abe Lincoln's lap. Sadly, neither Bruce Springsteen nor Bono will still be there to keep me warm.
MSNBC seems to think themselves to be "of the people" judging by the location of their broadcast booth in the Not-So-Beautiful to Downright Ugly People's section:
They were in full-on, live broadcast mode. The broadcaster came out and talked to the crowd. Everyone else seemed impressed by him. I, on the other hand, am true to my generation and get all of my news from The Daily Show. He wasn't Jon Stewart (but then, who is?), so I had noidea who he was.
The Broadcaster started doing the usual chatty filler crap that is the reason that I get my news from The Daily Show when a camera on a crane began to pan the crowd:
So the crowd started taking pictures of the camera (myself included, obviously):
Here, I am taking a picture of one of the broadcast screens broadcasting the Broadcaster as he is being taped about two feet from me. If the t.v. screen were wider, you would have seen a woman in a red scarf and beret taking a picture. That woman would have been me, and I would probably have been swept into a vortex of postmodernism:
People started texting and calling their friends and relatives. "Mom!" the woman next to me shouted into her cell phone. "Turn on MSNBC! That's me, in the background, waving! Do you see? I'm waving! In the brown hat! Behind the announcer! Do you see?"
At least she cut the conversation off at that. One guy, after a similar exchange with his brother said, "is grandma there? Yeah? Hey! Grandma! Yeah, I'm in D.C. Yeah. How are things going there? Yeah, I know. Yeah." No mention of anything else going on. He just chatted with grandma about her sciatica or whatever. "This couldn't wait for the hotel?" I wondered.
Then, they broadcast Obama's arrival in Baltimore. Since this didn't provide opportunities to wave at a camera, the crowd began to disperse. That's when, on one of the giant screens out in the Not-So-Beautiful People's yard showed Bruce Springsteen. At the Lincoln Memorial. At that moment.
But that's another story.
*For the record, he lived on A Street. Bruce Springsteen led the E Street Band, and I have no idea where First came from except that A is the first letter in the alphabet. E Street actually figures into this day later, in another post.
**I jest because, seriously, Oprah has too much class to do this; but Obama is such a rock star that I think it would be funny if he caused someone as classy and important in her own right as Oprah to behave like, well, I would (or have) at a Don Henley or Sting concert. Jeez! You can see I'm part of the guilty white liberal fear of being racist because I am explaining the funny. You never explain the funny. It either is or isn't.
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