D.C./The Ex

Well I've just been terrible about keeping this thing updated. No surprise there. A few days after my last post, Stephanie and I went up to D.C. for four days, and the weather was so nice for so long after that I wanted to limit my time in front of a computer as much as possible. Those sunny, near 80 degree days took a turn for the bleh recently, though, and it's been chilly and rainy and/or overcast the past few days. The return to a more or less normal Spring is dispiriting following the unseasonably warm one, but at least we're not in the North or Midwest, where they're still getting snow.

The trip to D.C. was scheduled around Steph's Spring break from her job at Montessori, and it just so happened to coincide with The Ex playing The Black Cat. It was also a few weeks before our friends Tre and Sarah and their son Eli would be moving from the suburbs of Reston, VA to Ithaca, NY, and we wanted to visit with them a bit. Washington is a great place to take a trip if you don't have much money, because most of the museums and touristy things are free, and decent hotels are reasonably priced. We ate lots of good food, which wasn't as reasonably priced, but I have to chalk that up in part to not knowing the city well enough. Still and all, food was our one splurge and it was well worth it. Turkish tapas, Spanish tapas, dim sum and smoked lamb and quinoa soup from the Museum of the American Indian's surprisingly good (if pricey) cafe were the main highlights. (And btw, why is it the Museum of the American Indian instead of Native American? Seems kinda un-PC.) I know it's easy to hate on the small plate fad, and you can run a tab up pretty quickly eating that way, but it makes total sense to me. You get to try several different dishes, usually very flavorful ones, at one sitting. If you enjoy food, why wouldn't you want to do this? I guess the main problem is when mediocre restaurants, which Knoxville is lousy with, try it. But D.C. has lots of interesting restaurants, so odds are good you'll end up somewhere decent. My main food regret is coming across a Korean bbq truck right after we'd eaten, and I wasn't even hungry enough for one measly taco. We'd just had a breakfast with fresh fried fish, something I haven't had in ages, and I forgot how good fish could be with eggs, potatoes, toast and coffee. Why am I talking so much about food? I hate foodies. I even hate the word. I want to punch that word in the face. At least I won't be putting up pictures of food.

I'll keep the sightseeing details brief. You probably have a good idea what's in D.C. I will put in a good word for The National Gallery, which alone is worth hopping a Megabus for (more on that later). Not nearly in the same league as The Met, it's much less crowded and more manageable than that behemoth, but you can still spend an entire afternoon there. And it's probably the building on the Mall with the least amount of kids, always a plus. A bit off the Mall, the Folger Shakespeare Library is the place with the least amount of people in general. There were about five other people when I stopped by for a tour, excepting the 20 or so actors there to audition for a role in the Library's next dramatic production. I also got a library card for The Library of Congress, a neat but ultimately meaningless act, since I'm rarely in D.C. Still, it made me happy, even though I don't look it in my photo.


The highlight was seeing The Ex, of course, who don't make it to the U.S. all that frequently, and to the South hardly ever. Of course it was one year ago almost to the week that we saw them in town at the Big Ears festival, but that was an unusual event. I love the three guitar and drums lineup. They're basically three rhythm guitarists, playing repetitive riffs without a real lead player. It's amazingly effective and engaging, and of course Kat's drumming is always impressive. Every few songs they'll have something of a dual where two or sometimes all three of them freak out and show off a bit, best exemplified during "Double Order." Here's a video giving you an idea what that's like: http://vimeo.com/8060711. I love this band, and though what they're doing now is a pretty simple concept, they're doing it very well and I'd see 3 or 4 of their shows on this tour if I could.

Anecdote: I met up with old comrade James Henry at the Black Cat before the show. We were downstairs in the little restaurant part and he was telling me about life in D.C. He was talking shit about Fugazi and particularly Ian MacKaye, and I thought it was funny because he lowered his voice to do so. "You never know who might be around," he said. "What a paranoid, dude," I thought. We got up maybe 5 minutes later, and I saw Ian hanging out in the kitchen, about 20 feet from us. I think he could take James, too, so his discretion was warranted.