Washington Plaza Hotel - Washington DC
Chris and I are sitting at the pool at
the Washington Plaza Hotel in downtown Washington DC—it's a pretty
outdoor pool facing a modern, curved, 9 story hotel, and it's plenty
warm to swim, an unseasonably warm Indian summer day in the 90s. The
hotel is filling up with a huge, unmanageable group of Germans—I
don't know of what affiliation. There's a Peace Corps group meeting
on the pool deck, and the Germans want to swim, presenting the hotel
authorities with non-existent problems. Chris and I are invisible,
anonymous guests—Stephen is staying here just tonight, and we're
waiting for Sarah.
Our first night in DC was really good,
a decent crowd for American Job at the Key Theatre, at the
late, 9:30 show—I answered questions afterwards in the lobby and we
sold T-shirts and posters. Sarah and Chris and I are staying at
Sarah's mother's house, and it's quite comfortable—she and her
husband just moved in—not too far into suburbs—and I even have my
own room. We picked Chris up yesterday at the airport, he's mostly
tired from working on his documentary and he's burnt out. I've been
feeling good, but tired, too, from lack of exercise. Went out to eat
at a nice Thai restaurant, really good, with Sarah's mom and her
husband, they took us out, really nice of them. Last night we ate at
[illegible] Restaurant, quite good, near the theater—and today we
had lunch at a good place, I had chili and a spinach salad. Plus,
brunch on Sunday at Sarah's house—I'm eating well. Not going crazy.
Yesterday, everyone got into town,
including Suzanne, Esther, one of the coordinators, and others,
including Adam, the guy who does stuff with the Sundance Channel
website, and who interviewed us in LA. So everything was very festive
and exciting—we went to a party at a shithole called The Black Cat.
I was very tired, all in all.
Today we got up, met up with Suzanne,
Steve, and Dante and went to the NPR studio and did an interview with
Pat Dowell. The studio was extremely high tech and fancy. Then
we went to a restaurant and I went to a payphone and called Kristen
in Portland, and she interviewed me. Then we went to Steve's hotel
and sat by the pool. Later, Sarah picked us up and we went to George
Washington University and I parked the van in the parking garage
while Sarah and Chris and Suzanne went in to a conference hall with a
setup for making a TV show. I had to sit off to the side in the front
of the audience with a huge name-tag in front of me. The
presentation, which included clips, which were kind of bad on the
faulty technology, went on for quite awhile—like over two
hours—with lots of questions afterwards. I talked to a whole bunch
of students afterwards. Chris and Suzanne had to rush back to
introduce movies, so I stayed at dinner at TGI Friday's—oh, where
we went for dinner afterwards, courtesy of the department. I talked
to a bunch of students about various things, then Steve and Chris
came back to pick me up. We gave a girl a ride back to Georgetown and
she told us about her plastic surgeon, breast reduction surgery, rich
doctor father, etc. Then we went to the theater—oh, on the way we
stopped at a place where this woman said there was a club. It was
closed, but we got to hear from a homeless guy from Alabama, how he
needed money to buy some Pepto-Bismol because he had eaten some bad
seafood.
After the American Job show, we had a
short Q&A, but the theater manager was clearing us out, but then
I noticed suddenly, Calvin Johnson! He was there with his band, Dub
Narcotic—and didn't even know I was in this movie. Also along was
Ian MacKaye, which I realized later, who said (Sarah said) something
about “Stipe” telling them to go.
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