Getting Out - Earth Day

?uestlove of the Roots

The Climate Rally

This Sunday we ventured out to the National Mall to join the 200,000 folk celebrating Earth Day. This year's fete was the Climate Rally for "comprehensive climate change legislation." That's DC speak for "sweet free concert." We were supposed to have thunderstorms all day, but fortunately the rain held off. The event was pretty fun except for some long winded speakers like James Cameron and some congressmen. We left when John Legend came on and didn't have the endurance to stay for Sting (which means we missed "Message in a Bottle").

Observations

• The Roots served as the house band as a number of artists came out and performed a hit song or two - Mavis Staples "I'll Take you There," Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead) "Dancin in the Streets", Robert Randolph "Purple Haze", Booker T. "Green Onions"....
• The best song was the Roots with Booker T. and Joss Stone covering "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.
• We saw Jesse Jackson speak in front of the capital. Pure Americana (and lots of rhyming too).
• I was bummed to find out that James Cameron is not the guy who made "Almost Famous" (that's Cameron Crowe). In related news, we saw lots of nerds in Avatar face paint.
• Ran into Maria Menounos, MC of the Real World reunion episodes and sometimes Today Show host. Too intimidated to talk to her. Probably just would have asked about the RW/RR Challenge Fresh Meat II anyway.

This is how many plastic shopping bags the typical family uses a year.

Kathryn at the NASA tent.

I didn't realize how my head was titled. Kind of look like a gay spaceman.