DC ObamaFest:Day 2 - January 17, 2009,

Day 2 - January 17, 2009

We wake up and head for the city. Because we are in a 15-passenger van we can’t take it into the city, so we go to the train station and park it. Hey, the metro passes have Barack Obamas face on it! Oh yeah, it’s a new day. Paul comes to meet us with his SUV and we are off. First we must get food. We go to Gladys Knights Chicken and Waffles. It is packed and there is a wait but we all watch Obama’s train stop in Baltimore where he gives a speech. My cold is getting worse and Jack buys me a hot toddy. Finally we sit down and order, the items on the menu have Gladys K song titles (tho they aren’t playing any of her music). The food is well um, let me say “the midnight train to Georgia special” no thanks I think I’ll walk.

We drop Luvvie off in DC to meet friends at Union Station. When we get there the press is everywhere. Obama’s train is just pulling in. He is a Ba-Rock Star! It’s a madhouse, but everyone is in a good mood except the old white lady with the McCain/Palin bumper sticker. We try smiling to show her that we are friendly, but she isn’t buying it and zooms off. Oh well, her lost.

Paul drives us thru DC-The Capital, Georgetown, Washington monument (it does look like a gigantic KKK mask-check the light, they look like eyes), Adams-Morgan, U Street, K Street etc. People are partying everywhere. How cute! I love this town, it’s quite lovely. What ghetto? I haven’t seen any ghetto or even a hint of one. We go thru Rock Creek Park--nice!

We also drive into Virginia to the TV station Paul works for, Al Hurra. It’s actually 3 stations; one to Iraq and 22 Middle Eastern countries, one throughout Europe and one to Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries. A couple of studios, numerous edit suites, all very hi-tech but Jack & I are feeling like we‘re at work so we high tail it outta there. (The people were much nicer than at work and much more colour and diversity for sure!).

DC ObamaFest:Day 1 - January 16, 2009

Day 1 - January 16, 2009

Bette Davis said that “old age aint no place for sissies”, well neither is a road trip from Chicago to Washington DC, and I found out that I am indeed a sissy! Even traveling in a 15-passenger van with 6 other people that I like very much,, is a horror. The fact that it was -14 degrees when we left, that 3 of us were in various stages of the flu or a head cold and that the roads were full of black ice, --did not help. Oh we did everything possible to stay upbeat. We listened to comedy on the satellite radio, played Black history brainquest, grooved to Estelle, laughed and joked but we were all taking loads of Airborne, Dayquil, Chloreseptic and every Vitamin C product known to man. At one point several of us were in one of the pit stop bathrooms and all you heard was sniff sniff sniff—it sounded like an 80’s rock band was in the stalls. It was such a pain for me. Being in a van 14 hours is like 2 days at work (with better company of course).

The black ice slowed us down tremendously - there were minivans and trucks in ditches where they had skidded off the road. The worse was the FedEx truck turned over on its side, but if it’s late it’s free.

Finally we get there and our hosts are up & waiting. We are actually staying in Maryland at one of Deborah Crable’s parent’s houses. The house is great; multi-levels, 3 bathrooms and overlooking a lake. They insist I take the master bedroom with the private bathroom. (Okay sure;) We also have a second house (one of Deborah’s sister Donna & her husband Mario’s houses) across the street that’s just as beautiful & with a theatre. Jackpot! Deborah never told me they were ballers.

We all settle in for a much needed good nights sleep when suddenly I hear all this commotion. Sounds like a heated debate, maybe someone left a TV on. It gets louder and louder. Everyone is asleep and the TV is off. What is that? I look out the window—there’s the problem. It’s the damn geese! First they bring down a plane in NYC, now they keep me from sleeping. The thought of frois gras is sounding pretty good to me about now, if I wasn’t a vegetarian… Maybe a goose dinner for everyone. Oh no, now the ducks have joined in the fray. I cover my head with a pillow and dream of flying south for the winter…

London Mayor is Gary Busey

The new Mayor of London looks just like Gary Busey. Same crazy unkempt hair, same mad look in his eyes, & of course horrid teeth. Every time I see him on the telly I think Gary’s moonlighting- that’s why we haven’t seen him in any movies lately.

Ok more observations on London both good and bad…
As hip & cosmopolitan as it is, it’s totally hick town that the tube (subway) closes down at MIDNIGHT even on the weekends! The regular buses stop running too so there is only the ‘night bus’. Gregory Issacs, the reggae singer, had a big song in the 80’s called NIGHT BUS— now I get it. And it’s not like the city closes at midnite, just the transportation—how 19th century… One really interesting thing about the people on the tube, when it’s open, is that EVERYBODY is reading. I mean everybody: young, old, B&W it doesn’t matter. And not STAR magazine, they actually read BOOKS! I understand everyone reading the newspapers cause people stand outside the tube station handing you the free LITE LONDON & London UK News, which are pretty good—but whatup with the bookworm thing? Is everybody here cramming for a test? So yeah, yeah I got a book and put my STAR inside of it—Yankee style.

Let’s talk food. I’ve had some great foreign meals i.e. the BEST Thai I’ve ever had and I’ve had plenty of Thai. You see the sequence of Evan here spotting pizza in a beater—he had to go for it and it was DELICIOUS, they were real Italians (that explains the beater;). Every horrible thing you’ve heard about British food is true, but I’ve figured it out. The quality of food here is wonderful. Since we have our own flat we’ve (I’ve) been cooking a lot—more than I do in Chgo. But it’s a communal thing people come over and we all cook together. Food here is very CHEAP and oh so good. The meats (that I don’t eat) are excellent and the fish is SUPERB. Everything including the fruits and vegetables are very fresh and don’t contain all those add chemicals. So it’s not the English food that’s bad it’s the RECIPES. Great resources, bad execution. I mean who thought of pork and beans, stewed tomatoes blood pudding and bangers (don’t ask) for breakfast? Instead of being so aggressive towards the rest of the world they should have asked everyone for a cookbook or a few recipes and they could have stayed home, had a good meal and chilled like everyone else… They also don’t have closets, I knew this but I think Kidist was quite shocked. What to do, what to do. Hmm. But they do have projects and they call them “BRICKS”. Wonder if there any closets in there?

Went to visit some filmmakers in Nottinghill—it is so cute there. I love that area. I saw a building there that I dreamed about when I was a child—I swear I knew it immediately and I even remembered the dream. That’s it with the balcony…
One of the filmmakers, Ishmael, wants to do docs on the meaning of ‘Blackness’ around the world. They had some great art in the studio.

Everyone here still smokes like chimneys—even tho it’s banned indoors. It was so bad that I had to take my meds from the smoke OUTDOORS. Outside every pub and club you’d think there was a fire from all the smoke and I don’t know why—what with all the warnings on the cig boxes. They are not small & subtle with it like our cig companies. They have even launched a campaign showing tar filled lungs and cancer victims in the last stages of lung cancers. Someone explained to me that becoz they have national healthcare it cost the gov more for people to be sick, so they promote health. Unlike the USA, he said, where doctors, druggist, hospitals etc make a profit from our illness. And no I wasn’t talking with Michael Moore just an ordinary citizen. (They’re much smarter than us—must be that reading thing).

Even tho at home I live in a very mixed area (5 Blacks, 3.5 Latinos, 2 Asians and 50,000 whites) being here makes me realize how much we are not integrated and how prejudice we ALL are. There are so many different types of people here living side by side. The Muslim population is off the chain. Every type of Muslim from everywhere in the world— Black, White, Asian, Indian whatever. What I mean by prejudice is that at one point I was somewhere surrounded by what looked like classic ‘terrorist’ to me—I swear they all looked like they were responsible for 911—we’ve seen their pictures, we know. For a moment I felt a little apprehensive (me?!) and I started to understand that racist propaganda machine of the US that makes everyone different a terrorist or a threat. No one else thought anything of these people—some covered from head to toe, others in berkas, some men in, in, er those fake beanies (I’m talking religion not fashion) but I had to take a look at myself (& u look marvelous darling) and re-evaluate my perceptions. I’m doing pretty good now, tho sometimes I do think I'm about to get blown up, not as much as the average American would;)

I actually partied all night for the end of Ramadan. I’m out. I’m on my way to Paris