The Miniblog

Washington Dispatches, Day One

Well here I am in the dark, vile ever-beating heart of the empire. It's 6am and I am sipping hotel coffee, updating from the comfort of my bed at the Omni Hotel.

Train rolled in around last night at 7:30...got to the hotel about 15 minutes later by cab, then went with Yumi and four other people (doctor couples also down here for whatever conference this is) to an excellent restaurant 1/2 block from the White House - the Old Ebbitt Grill, Washington's oldest, most historic saloon, founded in 1856. Food was awesome and cheap compared to NYC..dinner for 6 plus drinks, desert (I recommend the Peanut Butter Mousse Pie) and coffee came to $216 before tip. And the food rocked, service was stellar. After dinner we strolled past the Treasury and the White House, we snapped a few pics with some of the ninja-ed out machine gun totting White House guards, which I was surprised we could do. When asked how many sniper sights were trained on us we wandered around one guard nervously laughed and refused to answer, so my guess was at least six. But the White House was beautiful at night. As an American citizen I was disappointed that while walking by the Treasury building I did not see hundreds of staffers running about inside with their hair on fire, arms flailing like epileptic muppets in response to the ongoing crisis. Seriously, I want to see some around the clock panic in that building 24/7 at the moment. The patriot in me will assume that they're confining the displays of panic to when Chinese tourists roll by during the day. Also no discernible signs of printing presses running. Will check back on that tomorrow.

DC is totally a political town. In the three cab rides I took (from the train station and too and from dinner) the cabbies all engaged us in politics. That'd never happen in NYC. And all three had political talk radio running in the car. The first driver from the train station was piping the audio from the McNeil/Leher report for christakes. Tipping is better under Obama apparently. I feel that the old cliche - that DC is hollywood for ugly people - will hold true. There is a palpable sense of humming power underneath all.

In the cab, rolled past the Watergate (now condos, which is probably telling of something) and the Cato Institute. I know where you fuckers are now. I gave them the appropriate salute from the back of the cab silently.

Today will see us move to another hotel and some sort of snapping of photographs in front of large stony monoliths depicting America's greatness. Bring it on, Ozymandais. I'll probably tear up a bit at the Lincoln memorial, but don't tell anyone.