Day 339/365 - Opera in the Outfield

Tonight was the Washington National Opera's second annual "Opera in the Outfield" and I went along with my friends Chris, Desiree, and Adriana and some of my co-workers. For the past two years, the WNO has aired a simulcast of its season-opening performance on the big HD scoreboard at Nationals Park (DC's baseball stadium). It's completely free to attend and you're allowed to sit in either the stands in the lower seating bowl or park your butt on a stretch of outfield grass.

Last year we sat in the stands until the intermission and then moved down onto the grass, but this year we opted to spend the entire time in the outfield. The sound quality is certainly much better in the stands, but it's just more fun to be laying back on a blanket on the grass under the stars and watching the opera. It's always a funny contrast when the simulcast begins and they show the crowd at the Kennedy Center on the screen. They're all gussied up in tuxedos and fancy gowns and there we are in jeans and t-shirts, eating hot dogs and drinking beer.

This year's season opener for the WNO was Rossini's comic gem, "The Barber of Seville." Although I'd seen "The Marriage of Figaro" before, I'd never seen its prequel "Barber of Seville." As with last year, before the simulcast began they showed a Bugs Bunny cartoon on the screen. This time it was the perfectly appropriate "Rabbit of Seville." The opera was even funnier than the cartoon. It's a story of love, greed, disguises, schemes, ruses and plots and the WNO's staging had several broad, slapstick-ish elements that were hilarious.

The singers in tonight's company were all excellent, and for a change the male performers were just as skilled at acting as were the women. It's been my experience that female opera performers are equally good at both the acting and singing required by the genre, while the men tend to focus almost entirely on their singing and settle for the most wooden, rudimentary, declamatory style of acting. The male performers in "Barber of Seville" thankfully didn't settle for that and their acting was generally excellent.

The crowd seemed bigger than it did last year and the concession lines were fairly crazy, but it was still a great night out. After the opera, my friend Chris got touched by divine inspiration and decided we should make a run to Krispy Kreme. As we neared the store, we saw that the "hot donuts now" sign was lit and we got as giddy as little kids. The four of us split a dozen donuts, which meant we each got to pick three. Chris and Des went for three of the hot glazed, I went for three of the chocolate iced cake donuts, and Adri mixed and matched. Then we sat there under the glowing neon sign and scarfed them all down. It was the perfect nightcap to our evening of high culture and low comedy.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 137/365 - On My Way to Venice!

This was the gate from which the flight that was the first leg of my trip to Venice departed DC. The plane for this flight was a tiny little commuter jet. Honestly, it was like flying in a VW Beetle. And the overhead bins were so small I didn't think I was going to be able to get my backpack to fit. The flight was delayed 30 minutes due to weather issues up north.

Then when we got to NYC, we were put in a holding pattern due to an aerial traffic jam at JFK. And once we finally landed, they had issues with getting the jet bridge to work properly and so we were delayed yet again. All of which meant I had to hustle to catch my flight to London, which was the second leg of my trip to Venice. So instead of lounging around the airport and grabbing a bite to eat, I was running (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof) from one end of JFK to the other.

Thankfully the plane for this flight was much bigger. It was actually bigger than it needed to be, given that it was only about three-fifths full. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as we left the gate they made us go and park and wait for 45 minutes for the backlog of flights in line to take off cleared. I got stuck sitting in amidst a group of 10 people traveling together who didn't speak English. They were constantly in and out of their seats and talking loudly and to top it all off they had a bunch of kids with them.

Thanks heavens I remembered to put a pair of earplugs in my backpack. I stuffed them in my ears, popped a Sominex, and settled down to try and get some sleep.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)

Day 86/365 - Break Out

I think my 365 Project has been good for me in a couple of ways. First, it's gotten me to play around with my cameras and try some experimental shots that I might not have considered otherwise. Second, it's motivated me to 'get up, get out and do something' on days when I might otherwise have just been content to stay at home. Like today, for instance.

After getting sucked into the 'Bones' marathon yesterday, I nearly got trapped by the 'I Love Lucy' marathon today. I swear, sometimes I think couches were invented by television manufacturers, broadcasters, and snack food companies in order to snare us into consuming more of their products. Or maybe that's just me. I didn't want to shoot another photo of something laying around my apartment today, though, so I decided to go hit a museum and grab some grub. I did stick around on the couch long enough to laugh myself silly at the 'Vitameatavegamin' episode of Lucy, though. That one is one of my all-time faves.

I was debating between checking out either the Newseum or the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, and I finally decided to go with the cops and robbers. I love old gangster and g-man movies. That was one of the reasons I rented a tommy gun when my brother and I went to a shooting range in Las Vegas last winter. Man, those things are heavy.

It costs $19 to go to the C&P Museum. I think $13-14 would be a more appropriate entry fee, but the place was pretty full so I'm guessing they aren't feeling any pressure to cut their rates. The museum was pretty interesting. It covers the history and tools of crime and punishment from medieval torture implements up to modern computer crime. A lot of the museum's display objects are replicas, but they do also have some nice original artifacts, such as guns used by various members of the James Gang, the State of Tennessee's former electric chair Old Smokey (creepy, btw), and one of John Dillinger's getaway cars.

That's it above, a 1933 Essex Terraplane. It's weird how you used to be able to open up the windshield in order to get a breeze while you drove. I remember once watching a documentary on Depression-era bandits that explained why they were almost always able to outrun pursuing lawmen -- they spent their ill-gotten gains on high-power, high-performance automobiles like this one and most local police departments made do with rattletrap old beaters. Ford Motor Co. even took advantage of Dillinger's use of their vehicles as a sales pitch by stating that the police would only catch him once he stopped driving their V-8s. Maybe they were right, because this Terraplane is one of the last cars he drove.

It's a bit odd that I broke out of the soft prison of my apartment just to go and browse a museum dealing with the penal system, but it wasn't a bad day out. Plus it gave me a chance to swing by Matchbox for a late lunch/early dinner. Yum! That's definitely not prison food.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)