THE BURBANK AIRPORT

Bianca and I hopped on at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport and boarded United for Washington DC this morning at 7AM PST. I barely made it on the plane as usual. I had argued last night about what time we needed to get up in the morning, telling my daughter,

"Look, this why we fly out of Burbank to get anywhere. They service the TV and Film Industries, they aren't lurking for your Bic lighters and your fluids over 2 ounces. They aren't into making you strip down while they sniff your intentions for hidden acts of terrorism. They aren't LAX, we can get there at 6:30, trust me, your dad's been flying in and out of there for 30 years as the Warner Bros Lot Best Boy, you did too when you were a baby. DO NOT CALL ME AT 5am. I'll be packed, call me at 6."

click.

Bianca is a film student at LA Film School n Los Angeles. I'm an Occupier. She is my daughter, I'm her mother. We haven't traveled together for a while since she's started school, and since I started Occupying. She's a great artist, she's together and organized, I've been told I'm a great artist. I'm a little less linear. The family says that, like my father, I'm eccentric and a little out there.

Well, I wasn't packed before I passed out, in fact, I passed out with things still in the dryer. The phone rings at 6AM. I mumble about coffee first and what? where? huh? before I bolt up, remembering It's time to go and Occupy Congress and Occupy the Dream but in order to do that, first I had to occupy my suitcase while my cats are meowing about occupying the cat food.

But hey. I'm pretty well travelled and know how to pack. Basically, you don't need anything but your ID and one outfit. If you have time, you throw in things you might need. If you're way ahead of the game, you get the different "looks" together and overpack before you whittle the junk down to basics again. 

If you're in media like both Bianca and I are, grab the cameras, their chargers, their data storage, laptop, ipad, their chargers, card readers. Cell phone, charger, housekeys. boom. done. GO. 

I become a blur and pull it together knowing I could be forgetting something but won't find out till I hit DC. I feed and kiss the kittens, stash the keys for Ashley who'll come to occupy my Apt, and in an OJ minute, by the time Bianca calls to say she's out front in the cab, I'm in the cab too, telling Bianca, "See? Let's do this, let's occupy muther-fu**in' DC!" .

Longer story short, The Burbank Airport. If you ever need to get anywhere quick without trauma, fly Burbank to get in and out.They love you Media. Anyone Media, anything media, at your service, Occupy Burbank Airport. Boom. Done. Go.

OCCUPY SAN DIEGO'S Travel Set-back

The flight from Burbank to Denver was a little under 2 hours. We got there and sat around for about 2 hours before getting back on for the remainder of the trek. Jamba Juice in replacement for lunch was something I really needed. It was a resurrection for my tired, run-down self.  We sat there, checking emails and all that lay-over stuff most folk do to pass the time.

Bianca says, "You know what I just read on Facebook?" "No, what?"

"A greyhound bus driver told this group from Occupy San Diego that he didn't like their kind and kicked them off the bus in Texas and their stranded and twittering for help!"

I say, "WTF??!!!" but, I don't say the acronym. She says, "Yeah, let's google that." 

So I google it, it was true. Here's a gang of stories. Love to our brothers and sisters of Occupy San Diego, Solidarity.  Greyhound, Amarillo, Texas, Occupy San Diego Stranded In Texas #OSD

THE DENVER AIRPORT

"What a trip" I say. A bus driver can just do that? He should have been arrested for that.

Bianca says, Have you ever seen the video about this airport? I answer, "No, how boring, have you?" She answers, " "Yes. a long time ago. There's some weird stuff people are saying about this Airport, like, New World Order stuff." 

I say, "Oh brother". She says, "Yeah, let's google that." And we do. And it's weird. And suddenly,  I cannot wait to get the fu** out of there. After watching the Denver Airport video, I notice the structure right in front of us, right in front of Jamba Juice, in front of God and Country. It's basically, a portal that beams an astronaut up and out to...somewhere. There's actually an astronaut at the ground floor, and an opening at the top of the building. The design includes the scaffolding built around this portal thingy and it's that white scaffolding you see around satellites and astronaut pods that we've all seen a million times in movies. I shot a panorama of the portal that sits in the center of the Denver Airport. 

We get back on the plane after a hang in the weird Denver Airport and I watched a great movie while Bianca curled into a kitten circle in her seat and slept. The pilot announces we're landing in 20 minutes. We do. We grab a cab and make our way to our hotel.

WASHINGTON DC

Washington DC is absolutely beautiful. The last time I was here, I was 14 years old. After watching the Denver Airport video, I looked at DC a little differently, I have to admit. This, is the Nation's Capitol. Washington D.C. is in reality, an artificial, ad hoc city borne of politics, by politics, and for politics. 

It wasn't the first capital—Philadelphia tried its hand at national government in the years before (although the capital also moved around Baltimore, Lancaster, and York, as it fled British soldiers throughout the Revolutionary War). But Congress soured on the "Cradle of Liberty" after disaffected American soldiers, with the tacit sanction of the Pennsylvania state governor, chased its members out of the city to Princeton.

The vagrant government made brief forays into Annapolis, Trenton, and even New York City, but it had long become clear that the southern states would not tolerate a northern capital, and that the capital would need to be independent from the then powerful state governments. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton agreed in 1790 to a compromise location on largely uninhabited land in the Mid-Atlantic. The exact location was up to George Washington, and he rather liked a spot that just happened to be next to his house at Mount Vernon. Pierre L'Enfant was charged with planning the new city, lying outside the jurisdiction of any state, and following rapid construction under his supervision, the young government arrived in 1800. Aside from a temporary relocation to Leesburg, Virginia, during the War of 1812 (when the British set the city on fire), the U.S. government had found its home in the District of Columbia. - wikipedia

You can actually see the power here in the monolithic structures, beginning with the first visible representation of our Nations's sordid and mystical history. I say, "Bianca,look." I point out the window to the left. Bianca gasps admiringly. "The obelisk," I say.  The Washington Monument  measuring 555 feet 5.5 inches (169.29 m) in height, is the world's tallest true obelisk; completed in 1884.

Bianca says, "It represents the phallus of Osiris, his parts were scattered all over the earth and Isis found that part and ..."

Me, I'm picturing the goddess with a penis in her hand while my brilliant daughter does her genius babble she's been doing since she was 2 years old. I stopped wondering where her knowledge came from by the time she was 5. She concludes with, "...it represents power, male power. I'm like, "...uh-huh."

The Pentagon is here and real close, in Virginia, home of The Department of the Defense, really the Department of the Offence. The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest judicial authority in the States, the Capitol Building is the meeting chambers for the Senate and The House of Representatives. There's a lot more too. There's The Library of Congress, The Department of The Interior, The White House. Then, just a little closer in, we're driving by the infamous Federal Reserve and I can feel this Nation's power as we drive through the City.

The power of the 1% and the rising power of the 99... But we didn't get to the rising power of the 99 until after dinner in the District of Columbia. The District of the 1%.

MC PHERESON PARK AND FREEDOM PLAZA - DC's 2 Occupy Encampments

Last night, Bianca and I visited McPhereson Park, then walked around 6 blocks with the medic, Justin and an occupier named Quest over to Freedom Plaza where yet a 2nd Occupy camp is. Last night, when strolling into McPhereson, I found it awesome that the first occupiers we found was Joe and Mike from Occupy Los Angeles. And there was that familiar smell of City Hall Dank. This morning, I'll attend the Occupy DC GA at 9:30 AM. At 10AM We'll meet up with the Russell Simmons group and The Clergy he collaborated with to start OCCUPY THE DREAM. We'll march onto The Federal Building. 

McPhereson Park, home to Occupy DC

"This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.  ~ Martin Luther King Jr.   (excerpt from Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967). 

TODAY: OCCUPY THE DREAM ...to be continued