Wednesday

Today was another movie day: a double-bill of Jacques Tati titles in Silver Springs. When I go out to the movies in the middle of the week, Sunshine rarely accompanies me. She takes advantage of the time I'm out of the house to get uninterrupted work done on her book or to watch the sort of TV I'm uninterested in. Today, however, she had a movie of her own to see: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003),* a documentary about the April 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. She was planning to meet a friend somewhere on 18th St. near Dupont Circle for a six o'clock show. We headed to the Circle and grabbed a quick dinner together before heading our separate ways. Then my metro luck kicked-in: since I was running late, I'd decided to actually walk down the long escalator at Dupont south; so it felt karmic when I discovered the train squealing in just as I stepped onto the platform. I ducked quickly into the car before the doors could close, and even found a seat on the rush-hour train, somehow. And then I sat there. The doors stayed open, and I slowly began to tune-in the PA announcements: something happened today at Gallery Place/Chinatown, some train gone bad, and we were staged at the platform until further notice. During the five o'clock hour, that's a train every two minutes being stopped along the whole line. It took a while to sort out, but eventually we headed on north, stopping frequently. While passing through Chinatown station, I didn't see any bodies or wreckage. I suspect everything turned out okay. It did for me: I still managed to somehow get to my movie with enough free-time to order a chai at the concession stand. [Cavin]