Notes from UndergrounDC, Part I

I went to my sister's high school graduation today. Having gotten up at 6:15 am to squeeze lemons and pit cherries for the after-party eatins, I was bleary-eyed and oversexed and ran off to Constitution Hall with the familia looking like the alternate fifth member of Sahara Hotnights. On the way over the Roosevelt Bridge we passed Darth Bush's motorcade going the opposite direction into Virginny. The cab driver said, "Look, the president." I said, "Look, a disoriented weasel." Const. Hall was surreal enough, considering the last time I went there was to see Sonic Youth. This time instead of "Drunken Butterfly" and Kim Gordon I got "Pomp & Circumstance" and the superintendent of schools. I smirked rudely during the singing of the alma mater b/c this high school was my high school, too, and I don't remember its walls being particularly proud, nor its halls especially hallowed. What I remember is a conform-or-die imperative, overcrowding problems, patronizing administrators, and teachers using the word "gay" as an insult. I did learn, howevs, that the 18 year-old Arlingtonian ladygirls of today, like those of yesterday, favor very long hair & very high-heeled shoes in the manner of beauty pageant contestants.

The above-ground section of the Red Line btw. Silver Spring and Union Station is the ass-kickingest DC Metro ride ever, and the only route I can think of that even begins to rival the through-the-window urban anthropology of the Chicago El. I read my Stephen Fry book and fell in love with the woman sitting behind me talking on her phone without ever seeing her. That Southeast corridor should totes win some kind of national graffiti award. One wall said, "Rancor is an extreme monster." Totes, totes, totes. When I got out at my station these Wash. Post promo people were handing out free frozen cherry desert things in cones that were a scary, push-up pop-style combo of Italian ice and ice cream with the appeal of neither. The fireflies, though, were going nuts in the twilight and I had the Heavens to Betsy song in my head as I walked home, so all was right with the world.