If there's one thing I've found out in the past couple months, its that museums are absolute treasure troves of things people haven't done before. I generally like museums, but I took them for places to see things that were unusual and interesting more than experience things that were new and interesting. Yeah, I know, I'm just splitting hairs, but would you really still be reading if every entry started with "and then we stopped at the Museum of Whatever-the-Heck?". Maybe some of y'all would, but that's cause we're all huge nerds.
In any case, I was making a week long exception to my generally anti-museum stance during this year to experience some of what our Nation's Capital has to offer. I figure if you're going to see dinosaur bones, you may as well see the federally funded set so the tax dollars didn't go to waste. Friday was Ben's first day of Spring Break so we decided to stop at a couple places he hadn't see yet. First stop on the tour: the Newseum!
Now that is a nifty little building. And by nifty I mean awesome. And by little I mean freakin' huge. There is enough stuff in the Newseum to last a whole season's worth of trips. Some of the interactive stations alone would take 15 hours to view all of the materials on. Probably the coolest thing for me is that they constantly update the exhibits. Well, not all the exhibits...
The Boston Tea Party: Ben not Included
They had a ton of things that went along with news stories of their day. They had the door that the Watergate burglars taped open when they crept into DNC headquarters, one of the original "Dewey Defeats Truman" papers, an old printing press, original documents published during the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth to aid the search, the original "On Notice" board from the Colbert Report and the San Francisco Chronicle from September 12th, 2001.
Its like they read my mind.
Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the Newseum revolves around news, television and information, it wasn't there that we saw the real, honest to goodness TV studio. Instead, we saw a lot of pictures of presidential puppies (Lincoln's dog was a mutt named Fido) and clips of current comedic headline readings. It wasn't until we got to the National Crime and Punishment Museum that we got to see the TV studio (see that? that's called a plot twist, right there).
Now, I hotly debated the prospect of noting that I've never escaped from prison as my thing of the day. The Crime and Punishment museum had a neat little escape tunnel set up, showing how prisoners at some jails had gotten out. Now, by "neat" and "little".... I actually mean neat and little. The museum was a guided tour of the whole crime-punishment process. As it turns out... Ben is the good guy and I... well... am not.
Its only fraud if you get caught...
Which I did.
I find this jail sparse and distasteful.
That's it. The service here is awful. I'm leaving.
Officer Opie is displeased with my insolence.
As fun as cops and robbers in a museum was, it still doesn't explain anything about how we saw a real TV studio. Well, it turns out, there's a show that's filmed in the basement of the National Crime and Punishment Museum. No, its not Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. Actually, America's Most Wanted films in the basement of the Crime and Punishment Museum. Every week, John Walsh and a crew of phonebankers take over the building and host the live call-in portion of the show. They've caught over 1000 people thanks to tips called in during the program's air time. In addition to seeing the actual set, we got to see a lot of the behind the scenes equipment and lighting that makes everything possible.
See? Told ya so.
Seeing where they film the show that has brought a ton of honest to goodness dangerous criminals to justice was pretty darn fantastic. Especially for me. What can I say, I'm a law nerd. And, of course, Ben got to prove... again... that he always ends up playing the good guy. It was a delightful day - especially because we got to meet up with Lisa for dinner later that night.
No comments :
Post a Comment