Beaux Arts and beauty, ye bitches!

Alert the (social?) media, I have returned from Fall break!  I had a week off to relax and unwind so naturally I scheduled two jam-packed vacations and my sinuses are now suffering the consequences of so much travel.  Since I feel like this blog has turned into an ongoing list of my ailments and travels, we'll just skip to the good part.  Feel free to catch up (or follow me!) on Instagram for a real blow-by-blow of all my activities with moderately entertaining captions.  You've never seen a sandy beach until you've seen MY sandy beach pics!

After a half week in Florida I booked it to DC for a ladies' weekend and to take my citizenship to another level.  After months of emails and planning we were able to get a tour of the White House!  America, fuck yeah!  Figured we should just do all three branches of government and decided on a tour of the Capitol and Supreme Court.  Notorious RBG here we come!

Sadly, the White House tour was not very exciting.  Partly because I KNEW that somehow we were going to meet Michelle and we did not and I was pretty pissed.  How rude of her.  We did however wait about an hour in line to get a 15 minute self-guided tour of the East Wing.  I think you can see more of the White House in an episode of Scandal.

However I DID enjoy the tour of the Capitol which I'm pretty sure I spelled 'Capital' on about half of all my 'grams and tweets last week.  

We had a (volunteer) docent who was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful.  And who can resist a ballet pink coffered ceiling?  

The art and statuary was pretty incredible and here is one of my favorites in the Rotunda: "The Portrait Monument" featuring Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.  It debuted in 1921 where is sat for ONE day and then was housed in the basement for 76 years until 1997 when it came back into the Rotunda on Mother's Day.  They some badass suffragette bitches who sat in the basement way too damn long.

After a quick stroll through an underground tunnel we came upon the Library of Congress which was by far the highlight of my DC tour.

I may be a weirdo modernist/Brutalist-lover but who can resist dozens of pairs of immaculate Corinthian columns?  

With the exception of the dramatic ceiling and mosaic-tiled floors, the entirety of the structure was in white marble.

Oh hello, you sexy, sexy marble man beast of a building.

I love me some good contrast.

It was so pretty I forgot that Michelle Obama stood me up for the meeting that existed only in my head.

"Hear ye, hear ye, let us inlayeth some glorious mosaic IN theith marble floors!" - A very smart early American architect person probably.

But the ceiling was what made me drool and walk around the mezzanine slack-jawed in circles for about an hour.  The center has a stained glass coffered ceiling because why wouldn't it be?  This is one hunnit percent Beaux Arts, ye bitches!

Read the entire list of quotes and references painted on the ceiling here.  I wish we'd done the guided tour here but it was an afterthought and we were tired.  Walking on concrete and marble for six hours really starts to wear on you and your plantar fasciitis.  Dammit, what'd I say about travel and ailments?!?!?

I feel like they're just showing off now.  Sheesh, America.  Tone it down.

Ornamentation can't be all bad, right?!

All of these pictures were taken in the grand hall of the library but you could peak into the main reading room here:

I KNOW some Nicholas Cage-type angels live here.

But you were completely enclosed in glass as to not disturb all the people below actually using the library for research purposes.  Or "research purposes" because they all looked like they just wanted to be seen in the Library of Congress to appear smart.  You're not fooling me, old guy in cardigan reading a three foot tall book.

Thank you, 19th-century absence of interior lighting.

There were also two large reading rooms on either side of the main hall that held exhibits on the Civil Rights movement and early American peoples.  I could have spent a few more hours in there but they didn't have as many marble columns (and also no pictures allowed).

Be grateful I spared you the images of the HVAC grates and handrail details.  I had to draw the line somewhere.  Also, the rest of my group was sighing dramatically sitting on the benches waiting for me.

So my advice is to skip the White House (thanks for nothing, Mobama!) and head for the Capitol and Library of Congress if you haven't done so.  All free and all worth it.  IF YOU LOVE AMERICA.  

But if you hate America and her architecture but love makeup fear not!  After I did my citizenly duties I did my consumerist duties and went to the Smooch Studio in Frederick, MD and had some custom lipstick made for myself!

I told her I wanted a red so dark it was black since I'm going for goth winter witch look this season.  Then a makeup wizard scientist mixed it up for me on a special makeup palette (part painter's palette, part color wheel, part recipe board) and poured it into mold and let it set then TA-DA!  I named it Tennessee Vamp.  Seemed appropriate.  

I'm sure Thomas Jefferson would have approved, the old fucker.