Outdoor movies

I finally made it to D.C.'s Screen on the Green (outdoor movies on the National Mall) last night for the last showing of the year. The movie (which I hadn't seen): "Rebel Without a Cause." (My friend and James Dean fan Mel probably hates me for never having seen it previously, but at least I'm more cultured now.)

Of course, the day Emily and I planned to go happened to be D.C.'s hottest day yet this summer. We were cautious about the weather, but by the time we secured our spot on the grass at 7 p.m., it wasn't all that hot. (It would have been very hot to be running or exercising outside, but given that we were simply sitting there, it wasn't too bad. We even had a bit of a breeze.)

D.C. people have some strange tradition of standing up and wildly waving their arms in the air during the intro to the movie. (I had heard about this, but I didn't quite understand HOW weird it was until I saw it.) Well, at least everyone was having fun. And then the movie began and all was going well until ... drops started falling from the sky.

First, it was barely a sprinkle; then the drops came faster. Emily and I (and many others around us) decided it might be time to go. As we put on our shoes and gathered our blanket from the ground, we heard shrieks from the crowd sitting to the west of us ... and seconds later we were in the middle of a downpour. By the time we walked a few blocks, the rain had more or less stopped, but we weren't going to risk a return to the Mall. (I have no clue whether the movie stopped or kept playing during this time. At one point during the downpour, it appeared the movie was still going on the screen.) We continued our walk to the metro and made it home without any more drops hitting us.

As for the movie, I plan to watch the end of it sometime this week.