bashing and f-bombs.
By the time I wrapped with Chevy, I had eight minutes to get to the Dirksen Senate
Office Building to interview JanuaryJones. I would no doubt have to fight my way through a pack of male staffers with
dreams of dry-humping her, but that was not my biggest problem. Eight minutes: I had
eight minutes to go a mile.
I hustled to the underground train that runs between the House and Senate buildings.
It’s a little like Epcot Center, but instead of sitting next to chubby children wearing
mouse ears, you sit behind our country’s anointed ones. I say behind, because they
have reserved seating and you get to stare at the backs of their heads from steerage.
Darting around like a Senate page, I finally made it to Dirksen and to the front of
the line for press interviews with the blond actress.
“Oh, the Capitolist, ” an eager PR gal in lots of J. Crew knitwear said after eyeing the pack of shiny
credentials hanging around my neck. “You’re Adrienne Brown, and I’m Kate Bonneville,”
she said, offering her hand.
We walked around a mess of TV crew wires. Kate gripped my elbow. “We don’t have the
press packets ready yet as my idiot intern printed them in red ink. Don’t worry, I
fired her, but you read the release I sent yesterday, right?” she asked. “It had all
the information you need. Info about Miss Jones’s current work with the group, her
recent PSAs, even a lengthy piece about the historical significance of her current
hairdo.”
“Of course,” I replied unconvincingly. In truth, I had glanced at it while robotically
reciting my morning Starbucks order. I took some shoddy notes, but January Jones could
be in town to promote atomic bombs for all I knew.
I nodded to the cameramen, photographers, and other gossipy writers—all the people
I was used to seeing in Hill rooms—and scanned January’s Wikipedia entry and some
Google news hits on my phone before I entered her holding room. I wasn’tprepping for Celebrity Jeopardy against Stephen Hawking. I was sure I could gather enough from IMDb to do a decent
job with my quick-hit interview of a doe-eyed actress. January’s hair was glossy,
her hemline long, her neckline high. She looked like a very attractive person playing
the part of an erudite Washingtonian. I sat down next to her at a slick mahogany conference
table, pushed my bangs out of my face, got out my Capitolist -stamped pen and notepad, and gave my notes a glance. It seemed, according to the
nonsense I had jotted down this morning, that the actress had descended on our city
to lend her voice to the plight of the snail. I looked at my scrawl again. It was
written in a kind of exhausted hieroglyphics, but it definitely said “Jan Jones. Snails.”
Weird, but I had seen far stranger. Like those PETA girls who stand in public parks,
slather their bodies in egg-free mayonnaise, throw some iceberg lettuce on their privates,
and scream the day away about animal rights.
After shaking January’s slender, scented hand, I said, with far too much excitement,
“How wonderful that you’re in Washington advocating on behalf of the endangered snail.
Ah, the woe of a snail!” I flashed a smile in response to hers, feeling sure that
my teeth were the color of mud compared to her snow-white chompers. I quickly wrote
“Schedule Zoom! whitening” on my reporter’s pad right under the scrawl about snails.
Her press flack, sitting to her left, glared and mouthed something at me, which I
ignored.
“Tell me then, how did your passion for protecting snails come about?” I asked January.
“Years spent in the region around Burgundy perhaps? Les escargots de Bourgogne are
my absolute favorite . . . to save, that is! My favorite snails to protect in the
wild.”
Phew! Brilliant recovery on my part.
Snapping her fingers and then rapping the table with hernails, January’s assistant mouthed something at me again.
By the time I wrapped with Chevy, I had eight minutes to get to the Dirksen Senate
Office Building to interview JanuaryJones. I would no doubt have to fight my way through a pack of male staffers with
dreams of dry-humping her, but that was not my biggest problem. Eight minutes: I had
eight minutes to go a mile.
I hustled to the underground train that runs between the House and Senate buildings.
It’s a little like Epcot Center, but instead of sitting next to chubby children wearing
mouse ears, you sit behind our country’s anointed ones. I say behind, because they
have reserved seating and you get to stare at the backs of their heads from steerage.
Darting around like a Senate page, I finally made it to Dirksen and to the front of
the line for press interviews with the blond actress.
“Oh, the Capitolist, ” an eager PR gal in lots of J. Crew knitwear said after eyeing the pack of shiny
credentials hanging around my neck. “You’re Adrienne Brown, and I’m Kate Bonneville,”
she said, offering her hand.
We walked around a mess of TV crew wires. Kate gripped my elbow. “We don’t have the
press packets ready yet as my idiot intern printed them in red ink. Don’t worry, I
fired her, but you read the release I sent yesterday, right?” she asked. “It had all
the information you need. Info about Miss Jones’s current work with the group, her
recent PSAs, even a lengthy piece about the historical significance of her current
hairdo.”
“Of course,” I replied unconvincingly. In truth, I had glanced at it while robotically
reciting my morning Starbucks order. I took some shoddy notes, but January Jones could
be in town to promote atomic bombs for all I knew.
I nodded to the cameramen, photographers, and other gossipy writers—all the people
I was used to seeing in Hill rooms—and scanned January’s Wikipedia entry and some
Google news hits on my phone before I entered her holding room. I wasn’tprepping for Celebrity Jeopardy against Stephen Hawking. I was sure I could gather enough from IMDb to do a decent
job with my quick-hit interview of a doe-eyed actress. January’s hair was glossy,
her hemline long, her neckline high. She looked like a very attractive person playing
the part of an erudite Washingtonian. I sat down next to her at a slick mahogany conference
table, pushed my bangs out of my face, got out my Capitolist -stamped pen and notepad, and gave my notes a glance. It seemed, according to the
nonsense I had jotted down this morning, that the actress had descended on our city
to lend her voice to the plight of the snail. I looked at my scrawl again. It was
written in a kind of exhausted hieroglyphics, but it definitely said “Jan Jones. Snails.”
Weird, but I had seen far stranger. Like those PETA girls who stand in public parks,
slather their bodies in egg-free mayonnaise, throw some iceberg lettuce on their privates,
and scream the day away about animal rights.
After shaking January’s slender, scented hand, I said, with far too much excitement,
“How wonderful that you’re in Washington advocating on behalf of the endangered snail.
Ah, the woe of a snail!” I flashed a smile in response to hers, feeling sure that
my teeth were the color of mud compared to her snow-white chompers. I quickly wrote
“Schedule Zoom! whitening” on my reporter’s pad right under the scrawl about snails.
Her press flack, sitting to her left, glared and mouthed something at me, which I
ignored.
“Tell me then, how did your passion for protecting snails come about?” I asked January.
“Years spent in the region around Burgundy perhaps? Les escargots de Bourgogne are
my absolute favorite . . . to save, that is! My favorite snails to protect in the
wild.”
Phew! Brilliant recovery on my part.
Snapping her fingers and then rapping the table with hernails, January’s assistant mouthed something at me again.
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