An-arch-y in Washington DC!

This past weekend there was a big protest in Washington DC. Cindy Sheehan was here along with over one hundred thousand other people and they marched on the White House chanting with signs and the whole thing.

At Talk Radio News, I got assigned to cover the protest, but there was a twist: there was also a smaller protest being held on the same day but a little earlier. The idea was that this smaller protest would conduct its business in the morning and then meet up with the big protest at noon for the big festivities (and the cookies and milk). This smaller was against the World Bank and the IMF.

And it was also full of Anarchists.

Now to this point, I really had no opinion concerning Anarchists. I suppose I knew they existed, somewhere, but I never really gave them much thought. I guess I broadly approved of them, being that were members of the radical left that most of the time I found kind of amusing and silly with their wide-eyed, snarling affirmations of conviction to really, really strange causes. But no more.

I do not like Anarchists.

The anti-World Bank protest was being held in Dupont Circle at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday (I knew this because TRNS gets releases about this kind of stuff ahead of time). In the week and a half I’ve been here in Washington, I have transformed into a very responsible, punctual person. So I showed up at 9:50, just to be safe. 10:00 came, then 10:30, 11:00, 11:30. Now, there were people there, normal protest people, dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirts, the whole deal (and don’t forget about the little clans of Anarchists), but they were all just sort of milling around aimlessly, some kind of weird Renaissance Faire from the future.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I first walked up to the protest, I heard a familiar melody wafting to my ears, riding on the humidity like a Leprechaun on a rainbow.

Dun di-dun di-dun --clap, clap--

As I got closer to a group who was chanting and clapping and dancing and kicking and shaking, I placed it, in spite of its different, now anti-Bush lyrics. It was the Fraggle Rock theme!

Unable to believe my luck (because I though it would sound great on the radio), I busted out my microphone and began recording them. I got about thirty seconds on tape before one of them saw me and scrunched up his face.

“Hey, hey you! Stop recording! Hey, hey!”

The guy, dressed in a high school cheerleader’s pleated (very short) skirt, high pig tails clamped with cute plastic barrettes, more than three days of stubble and two Wicked Witch of the West socks on his hands, jogged over to me and said, more or less, the following:

“We don’t want you to record us at this public event, where we came of our own free will, where we are in plain sight, and making a huge racket, to boot, because we are Anarchists. Later, when we are marching in the streets, we plan on putting bandanas across our faces, as if we were desperados. It would be ok to record us then. But now, with no bandanas, it is unacceptable. The irony of my being willing to publicly protest but unwilling to work with the press, who might be able to further broadcast my message, is lost to me. I am an idiot. I dress like I live in a dumpster. I have a credit card that my parents pay.”

So I obliged and didn’t record any more of them.

But that wasn’t the last of the Anarchists that day, oh no!

After the march finally began, a whole big wad of people (maybe a thousand) began walking down the middle of the Massachusetts Ave. The whole group made it down the street and then made several turns down other streets, ranting “Whose streets? Our streets!” the whole way. But then something strange happened. The entire group seemed to become confused and all packed into one intersection, blocking traffic and standing around. We seemed to have become lost.

But my friends, the bandana-ed Anarchists, felt they knew the way. With renewed resolve, they decided right was the direction to turn, and they resumed with their chanting, going down the street way from the rest of the group. As I saw this group of about one hundred fifty Anarchists leave the main group, I knew I had to go with them. Together we all made turns down different streets, but then, maybe five minutes out, they again became confused.

In the middle of a major street, blocking traffic, the Anarchists all brought out their cell phones and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually some kind of consensus was reached, and we all retraced our steps to the original intersection where we could just see the tail end of the rest of our group (who had turned left). We ran and caught up to them just blocks from the White House and Cindy Sheehan’s protest. The winded Anarchists didn’t miss a beat though, and marched right back into the thick of things.

I stood next to one rather normal looking protester, a man of maybe forty with a brown Bill Watterson mustache, as we both watched the black clad army of seventeen and eighteen year olds parade into the anti-war protest. He and I made eye contact and I shrugged. He moved like he was about to say something, but then paused, and decided better of it. I laughed and nodded my head.

“Seriously,” I said.

Found A New Bucket, Filling It Up

Just down the block from the UCDC Washington Center is the Human Rights Campaign, which is an organization that lobbies for the interests of gay people. I believe that this fact casts great influence over this general area, because there certainly are a lot of gay men around here. I might even be so bold as to say that the density of homosexual men is greater than in the Castro.

And before anyone gets all crazy, raising fists and signs of protest and explaining the very critical role that the belittled-by-me Castro played in the gay world, I just want to reiterate that these have just been my experiences. I have not (yet) engaged in a rigorous sociological study as to the exact levels and ratios and proportions of gays both here and there. But the few times I’ve been to the Castro, I saw enough men strolling hand-in-hand to internally verify that I indeed was in a gay area. But here in the general Dupont Circle area, it’s overwhelming. It’s almost like being on another (gay) planet.

I’ve had a few of those Marvin Martian moments in the past four days I’ve been here on the East Coast. And that’s a big deal because my bucket for those types of experiences had been totally barren only a week ago. The truth is, I thought that I had filled that bucket already. But as it turns out, the overflowing “embarrassing sexual encounter” bucket was stuck inside the “totally and brazenly out of place” bucket. I actually had never had an experience to put in that one.

(This may be of some importance: I enjoy the image of all my life’s experiences being buckets, blue plastic buckets. And every time I have an experience, it fills the bucket. When it a new experience, especially a painful one, the first drop in the bucket is a big deal. But as experiences add up, they really do become just another “drop in the bucket.”)

I never realized how tough it is to be the only one of something. And I mean truly the only one. Not an invented difference based on insecurity or power or sports team allegiance. But a real glaring, consuming, distracting kind of difference that colors (yes, intended) every interaction, every glance, every single moment.

Growing up in predominant homogeneity, I/we invented differences among us in white middle-class suburbia to be able to break ourselves into groups (to be able to more effectively pick on one another, I guess). But those differences that I can remember viewing as massive and cavernous, those differences were nothing.

I can remember feeling the odd one out being a Laker hater among Laker fans. Wearing a pink polo shirt. Defending LFO as the best late 90’s boy band (which just so happens to be something I still assert because I maintain my position that, because their songs and look were ridiculous to the point of, well, ridiculousness, they must have been doing it ironically, and thus, because they were in on the whole “boy bands suck” joke, they are the best. LFO stood for “Lyght Funky Ones,” after all). But that’s nothing when compared to being the only white guy in an entire basketball gym. Or being the only straight guy for blocks and blocks of gay bars.

Differences like those didn’t make me feel uncomfortable, the way I would have felt if I were in Davis at a frat party. Like a pain so sharp and intense it doesn’t hurt, but rather blows way past hurt to just feel warm, I simply knew that I didn’t belong there. I was way past uncomfortable. It was such a forgone conclusion that I was bizarrely out of place that all I could think was “Man, I don’t fit in here at all.” I could feel everyone looking at me, wondering how and by what circumstances I had wandered to the point on the Earth I was presently occupying. I’d never been the focal point of a room like that before.

I’ve gained some much more appreciation for how difficult it is to be the only one. These people that are so different than me have always had to be the “only ones” in my world back in the suburbs. And now being their only one in places where they are the majority gives me pause.

How my good friend Foster must have felt moving to Santa Clarita…

Well, anyway, I get it now.

Gus 1, DC Thugs 0

After spending a horrid first night in Washington DC sleeping on only a mattress like a homeless tramp, I awoke with great vigor locate and purchase bedding. I talked to some of the people in the Washington Center and determined that I would take the Metro to a mall that was apparently a short distance from the stop “Pentagon City,” which was a mere four stops on the blue line away from the Center.

And so, without incident, I made it to the mall, bought my super cool Tommy Hilfiger sale rack sheets, and began to make my way back, retracing my steps, fully aware of which side of the street to walk on so as to avoid the more vocal homeless people. Yuck.

The only problem was, this trip back found me laden with my purchases, and looking every bit the tourist/idiot/potential rape victim. I had sheets, a comforter, and egg crate and protein from GNC (because I’m gonna be huge). I was lugging all this stuff around and on the Metro and I must have looked pretty ridiculous.
I knew from my experience loading myself up with as many groceries as possible out of my mom’s minivan to bring into the house, that my ability to carry all of my stuff was tenuous. Nevertheless, I made my way to the correct Metro, found a seat, brought out Eggers' “How We Are Hungry,” and made ready for the ride back to the Center.

It wasn’t long before I felt eyes on me and I looked up and around, hoping to lock eye contact with a beautiful woman in a cool hat (or maybe a scarf), staring at me over the top of a magazine that was in some other language (maybe French), and desperately wanted to coo sweet nothings to me with her fantastic accent.
But such was not the case. My beautiful French woman was actually a portly Mexican man, unshaven with salt and pepper stubble and greasy, feathered (seriously) hair. His shameless leer was a bit shocking to me and I immediately looked away, but I could tell out of my peripheral vision that he was still sitting there, sharing like college kid on mushrooms.

I tried to shake off the threatened feeling that came over me, but all of a sudden my secret admirer and some buddy of his stood up (keep in mind that the train is moving and that a stop is not immediately coming up) and walked across the train to sit in the empty seat behind me. So there I am, with all my big bags of sheets and dietary supplements, and there is some guy behind me, breathing all hard and gross, at best wanting to have a bit of a fancy fling and at worst wanting to stab me to death and the work out a lot and sleep in discount designer sheets.

I freaked out and put my book away, and gathered up all my stuff and moved to a seat maybe fifteen feet away, where that guy and his buddy were not behind me but well within my field of vision. I gave myself one little second to look back at them and my slime-ball friend was again staring at me, but this time he looked really angry: his eyes were all big and crazy, like Al Pacino in the parts of his movies when he gets totally nuts (“Garbage bags!”), and he was resting his chin in his hands, his elbows on his knees, with his fingers covering his mouth (which was obscuring, I’m sure, his mouthing “It puts the lotion on it’s skin…”).

I decided it would be best for me to just look straight ahead (which happened to mean looking at a Metro map, to it wasn’t that weird) and hope that he wasn’t going to follow me off the train when I made it to my stop. I though about striking up a conversation with the old Jewish lady who was sitting near me, as a way to protect myself, you know, “safety in numbers,” but then I realized that an old Jewish lady wouldn’t really do me any good if I had to fight off these two guys, because these were probably the type of guys who wouldn’t care if they knocked her over in an effort to rob me. So I sat there patiently, clenching my teeth, and wishing, oh, wishing, that I had some kind of very intimidating weapon that I could pull out off a scabbard behind my back, or a utility belt around my waist, and just lay across my lap, or maybe fidget with it, toss it from hand to hand. A medieval mace would have been good, I could have pricked a finger on one of the four inch spikes coming out of it and turned to look at my chubby friend and mouthed “Ouch, that’s sharp.”

Thankfully, my stop came and I bolted off the train and just stared walking (in the wrong direction, as it turns out) while the train pulled away with my tormentors on board. As the train left, I caught sight of them still looking at me as they vanished from view. It was a very weird experience, but an experience I recount pretty often, every time someone asks me why I always carry a rusty, thirty-pound mace with four inch spikes wherever I go.

Helping out down South

Los Angeles Country sent an advance team to New Orleans assess the damage of Hurricane Katrina and offer advice. Due to my father's experience in the Northridge earthquake in 1994, he was a member of the team.

My dad returned home from New Orleans much as he left, which was a disappointment to me because I think I wanted him to come back looking really different, maybe a crazy beard or and eye patch or something. But I guess four days isn’t really going to change anyone that much, appearance-wise. Even if it was four days in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

I’ve been really busy recently and I haven’t been able to sit down and hear about his experience like I’d like to, but one story I have heard goes like this:

My dad flies into Houston where he is met by several military guys who take him to some military base right nearby. The rest of my father’s group assembles (they’re all local government officials from Los Angeles County and elsewhere in the state of California) and they all head out to a line of black Suburbans and Windstars. The military guys all ride up front, while all the passengers pile in the back. They take off in a caravan towards New Orleans and, at the beginning of the journey, drive normally. But as they get closer to New Orleans, fewer and fewer cars are on the road, and it gets to the point where the entire freeway is barren and empty. The military guys take this opportunity to drive their motorcade ninety miles an hour, booking into the disaster area in record time.

And that was how his trip began.

PS. My dad came home with about half of the group he went over with. Some of the group stayed back to do more work. We just got word today that they were reassigned from damage assessment. Today they went out and gathered dead bodies.

Bing bong

Hello, there. Welcome. Please, won’t you come in and sit with me here in the smoking room? I have a red satin bathrobe all ready for you. Here is a glass of finely aged scotch, or would you rather a cran-kewi-apple martini? Sit in this wingback chair, puff on this Cuban cigar. Let’s discuss our lives, our fears and dreams, the size of the universe and the nature of all things.

My name is Joseph August Caravalho and I go by Gus. I have recently helped my parents move from Riverside, CA to San Clemente, CA and those sixty miles make all the difference. In six days, I will be unleashing my talents upon the unsuspecting populace of Washington DC by way of collegemedianews.com. I’ll be a suit-wearing fool, and I’ll even be taking out my last remaining piercing in an effort to afford myself ever possible advantage by looking classy classy classy.

So, I’m shining my shoes as much as possible and practicing tying that tricky double Windsor knot, because my tie has to be dimpled like George Clooney’s in “Intolerable Cruelty.”

Thus, I'm off.