Dumb Nostalgia: Aug 6, 2007

Abandon Ship

Ally, Lilly and I went to the Air and Space Museum, where I was when I was maybe eight years old. It was mobbed with children, but still pretty cool. The Spirit of St. Louis hangs over your head when you walk in the door. It's a nice thing, even though I left without any astronaut ice cream.

We walked to the White House, for posterity, and then to the Holocaust Museum. I've always wanted to go, but every time I have a few hours to spare I never want to waste it being extremely bummed out by death and destruction and such. Seeing as I watched 'The World at War, Vol. 18 The Occupation of Holland,' last night, and have just started 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,' I figured it had to be done. It was remarkably grim, as is to be expected. There is a moment on the tour where they make reference to people as shoes, and have a collection of lost shoes from various work/concentration camps. It is a staggering number of nameless, faceless leathery objects, that still makes you cringe when you realize why they are where they are, if you know what I mean.

The rest of the day was sheer brilliance. The hotel held a wine tasting at about 5. It all tasted pretty good. We made friends with the bartender and he fed us gorganzola and honey comb on apple slices, and then recommended a French restaurant up the block. The sun set on the Palomar.

I dropped my laundry off this morning as well. It was the last chance to have anything washed for at least 2 weeks as we'll be in Japan (Westerners have yet to crack the code of Japanese laundry, it would seem), and Euro-festival-land again. So, I dropped off all of my worldly possessions, basically, with hopes of getting them back today. As I walked to the cleaners the bag that I bought at Wal-Mart last week split open from end to end, and slowly spilt my dirty clothes along the streets of DC. I gathered them up, apologised, and had them cleaned. I had the worst in mind. Several years ago, on a Strokes tour, Matt had laundry done in Hawaii and never managed to pick it up before we flew to Japan the next day. His clean clothes followed us around Europe and Asia for 3 weeks. We calculated that he had spent easily four times the cost of his entire wardrobe just to ship his shit around the world. That said, I picked up my clean clothes, and they sewed up my new laundry bag. Gold star for DC laundry.

The other day we survived Lollapalooza. 2 years in a row for me.

It was good, if a bit hectic. I saw lots of friends, and had fun, and worked my ass off for many hours. It still equated to a day of sheer madness.

It also rained, which is rarely a surprise during an Interpol show. I would think that god hates us, just a little. The setting is still pretty amazing. It's quite a festival to hold in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. I have missed Daft Punk yet again, though. I hear the show has been brilliant.

There was also the V fest yesterday. I hear that Sir Richard Branson landed on site in a hot air baloon and shat $3000 out during Velvet Revolver's set just to cover their stylist's fees for the day. Wait, that was a lie. The truth is that the second Interpol's intro started the heavens opened up and it poured like it does every single time those dicks pick up a guitar.

Even better was the fact that the festival was headlined by Billy Corgan's Big Bald Head.

For real though, I was as let down as any of those fools who waited for hours and paid lots of money for any of the 11 or so shows at The Fillmore in SF. The show was overblown on all ends. Super loud and messy, coupled with a blindingly poor light show (actually it wasn't terrible, the chili peppers had the same one a few months back, it was just derivative). Even the hits were reworked for today's post-raprock audience, i.e. just a bit more metal. Poor.