Chomsky or Bust!
January 4th, 2009
It’s been a hell of a month. I’ve been to Chattanooga, Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Birmingham, and Asheville in the span of about two weeks. I’ve been working on large, hard to explain project that I’ll talk about more when it gets closer to being finished. It involves interviewing some pretty heavy hitters in various fields. In this trip, we had meetings scheduled with Chancellor of DC Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, designer and professor at SVA, James Victore, and noted MIT linguistics professor and vehement political critic Noam Chomsky. All within three days of each other.
First stop was Chattanooga to meet up with Leigh Anna and consolidate passengers and cargo into the Thompsons’ car. We had breakfast at a place called Aretha Frankenstein’s. It was small but quirky. Then we officially began the journey up to Washington, D.C. using a GPS device, which none of us knew how to use, but learned to love and fear.
It was about a 10 hour drive to D.C. and by the time we arrived, our hosts, Sean and Yana, had gotten comfortably drunk at a holiday party, which made for an entertaining start to our visit to the Capitol. Sean, who moonlights at a place called Bonefish Grille decided we needed some delicious shrimp, went ahead and ordered us five seafood appetizers and we somehow only paid $11, pre-tip. It was delicious.
We decided that the brisk weather would make indoor museums a good choice of activity for one of our free days. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is well worth a visit, as is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where I almost ruined our whole trip while focusing a little too intensely on a lunar module landing in expert mode. One of my contacts started getting fresh with me and so I rubbed my eye in the middle of the simulator and kept going, and when I walked out, I couldn’t see out of my right eye. It had seemed I had lost the contact and would have to do all of our photo shoots with one good eye. Luckily, the contact was hiding up inside my brain and I was able to coax it out.
The next day was slightly warmer so we decided to go monument-hopping. Between the Lincoln Monument, the Vietnam Memorial, the WWII Memorial, and the Washington Monument, I felt an overwhelming respect for those who have served this country, either on the battlefield or in the Oval Office. As cheesily patriotic as that sounds, it’s true, and it’s worth mentioning.
On to D.C.’s main event. The interview with Michelle Rhee. We knew it was going to be intense, but we still were surprised at the efficiency and courtesy with which she was able to chew us up and spit us out of her office. She was a very no-frills, all-business, nice, but very serious woman. Before Chris could even sit down, Chancellor Rhee was ready to start the interview, and by the time I finished setting up the lights (which took about 7 minutes), the interview was over and she was ready for her photo to be taken. I shot four frames, thanked her, and sent her back on her way. The whole thing happened in less than 20 minutes.
We packed up the car, and headed to NYC. It was my third time there this year. Not sure how I managed that. After a $43 valet, we got into the room, dropped our backs and that’s when Chris got the mail from Noam Chomsky’s office that he had to cancel our meeting. We had been so excited that we had scored an interview with apparently “one of the most important intellectuals alive” (NY Times), and after some back and forth emailing begging for a mere two minutes to do the photo without success, we decided to just suck it up and enjoy our time in the city.
But it was Chris and Leigh Anna’s firs time there, and we had a hotel that was two blocks from Times Square, so we got to see the lights and eat some good pizza. The next day we headed over to Brooklyn pretty early to account for traffic and lunch. We were two hours early. So we walked up the street as it began to snow in big clumps, and ate at some sandwich shop.
The James Victore interview was just about the complete opposite of the Michelle Rhee interview. He invited us warmly into his home and poured us glasses of wine while we talked about his latest projects and his son and George Lucas. We talked for about two hours, and then James offered to show us one of his favorite watering holes, where we hung out for a few more hours over a few pints.
The next day we packed the car again and headed up to Boston. Since Noam cancelled and there was nothing we could do, we figured we were on vacation with a fee place to stay, so why not? I had never been and heard a lot of good things.
My friend Angel was gracious enough to meet up with us downtown and show us around the pretty parts of Boston. We dined at the oldest restaurant in the country, Union Oyster House, walked down Newbury Street, went in the largest Apple Store in the country, and took a lot of photos.
The next few days were mostly just hanging out. And then the snow came. I’d guess 12 inches the day before we left, but what do I know? We decided to enjoy it, so we grabbed the tubes and hit the slopes at a nearby park, where I transformed into a 10 year old child with the physical and mental capability to build a sweet jump and lunge towards with as much velocity as possible. It was awesome.
The next day we packed up and headed back south, stopping in Philadelphia and Chattanooga, to pick up my car. From there I went to Birmingham for a few days, then to Asheville, North Carolina for Christmas, and then back to Birmingham. It was quite nice to finally come back home, clean my house, and lounge around in my underwear for a few days.