Pep 4; An Incident on the Mall

So, there I was walking along the Mall for no particular reason, just like people always do on teevee shows set in Washington, but which real District residents absolutely never do because the Mall is a featureless void that sucks out your soul, warps all sense of perspective, and slows time like the event horizon of a black hole, an endless expanse where you can wander for eternity surrounded by travel-numbed Kansans and Japanese tourists, barely sustaining yourself from one facade to the next with $20 hot dogs and $9 sodas.

As always, there was some sort of motley collection of Hell's Angles/POW-MIA/Ex-pirate ministry/D-Day re-enactor types milling about in those needlessly loud homemade 'tanks' they cobble together to impress, one supposes, travel-numbed Kansans and Japanese tourists. Sometimes they try to cluster within spitting distance of their perceived foes at the Moscovian and Nordic Embassies, but, since those are in Dupont, they're usually scared off quickly by advances from patrons of the Leather Rack. You shoulda seen it last week, when the Inauguration coincided with the Mid-Atlantic Leather Convention.

Anyway, suddenly, a red-haired Evel Kneivel impersonator actually leapt onto one of the vehicles to savagely pummel its driver about the head and shoulders. Thank goodness the poor driver was wearing a helmet or who knows what kind of brain-damage he might have sustained, because this lunatic was hella strong and appeared miraculously impervious to pea-shooters. I was anxious to see whether the Kap Kops would be able to subdue him with motions for cloture or whether he'd have to be taken out by an irritable Geo-Force, who was standing nearby outside the Hall of Justice like he does every day, hoping today is the day they reinstate his access codes. Of course, "nearby" on the Mall means around one mile away, so Brion, being notorious self-absorbed, might not have even noticed the commotion.

Thanks to Washington's wacky weather, I missed what happened. I was distracted by a golden shower that at just that moment burst forth above the Capitol, raining UPS men all over the West Lawn (fortunately, thanks to Frederick Law Olmstead, there's never anyone there, not even Kansans or Japanese tourists, or somebody might have been hurt-- I mean, somebody other than the UPS men).

Later, I read in the City Paper's Loose Lips that it wasn't either the Kap Kops or Geo-Force who subdued the "Evil Kneivel". Turns out a Canadian Defence Attache dashed out of the embassy and stunned the lunatic into submission by showing him the brochure of the Newseum's admission prices.