This weekend we took a short trip to Atlanta with The Superheroes. We left Saturday afternoon, and arrived in time to check into the hotel, walk through the pride festival, and have dinner. We had a fabulous time people watching, chatting, and drinking it up. We ended up in a tavern on the way home drinking local brews and drunk dialing The Bachelor (Who Isn’t). The next morning we got up late, checked out, put our bags in storage, and walked to the aquarium.
The Georgia Aquarium is pretty new, and has some neat stuff. We saw penguins, otters, sea horses, jellyfish, and all that good stuff. The weird thing is that they have a ton of sponsors. Maybe that is the norm, and I get that aquariums are extremely expensive to build and maintain. But seriously. This is one thing that happened while we were there.
The Aquarium is split into several sections, such as “Cold Water Quest” and “River Scout.” Each is “presented by” some sponsor. The best section by far is “Ocean Voyager, built by Home Depot.” It’s basically one huge tank with something like 50,000 fish in it. You walk through these hallways with different views into the gigantic tank with a laminated card that shows pictures of each fish and its name. The star of this exhibit is the whale shark, a huge fish that can grow to 60 feet. There are also a few displays along the way, including one which describes how the whale sharks were delivered from Taiwan. That display consists of a long wall filled with information and a giant UPS logo. There is also a looping video showing footage of the delivery process. We joked about the negotiation process with UPS while looking at the display, but didn’t realize how deep this UPS thing really runs.
Later in the exhibit there is a big room that is set up amphitheater style, with a gigantic 23′ by 61′ view into the tank. You walk into the room, and some staffers invite you to sit down. It’s really mesmerizing, just seeing all those fish swim by. We sat and stared for a while, until some guy with a headset microphone started to talk. He told us some things about the tank and the different fish in it. He was clearly directing his talk toward kids, asking a lot of questions that, if we’d been paying attention to the displays, we’d be able to shout the answers to. When he started talking about the whale sharks, this is the series of questions he asked:
Aquarium Guy: Where did we get the whale sharks from?
Us, yelling in sync: Taiwan!
AQ: Who helped us bring them to Atlanta?
Us: UPS!
AQ: And how much did it cost to have them shipped?
Us: It was free!
AQ: And was that nice of UPS?
Us: YES!
All of a sudden I realized I’d been brain washed.
The other weird thing about visiting the aquarium is that people behave so strangely. It’s as if all normal etiquette no longer applies. People bump, elbow, and kick you without a word of acknowledgment. Adults shove their children toward the front of an exhibit, all the while saying things like, “wait your turn, honey.” And the picture taking. I get that you’d like to remember your trip and pictures are a nice way to look back. But really, shoving your way to the front then spending 10 minutes taking pictures or video of the fish and then walking away is ridiculous. You’re not capturing any memories, because you never saw it in the first place. You were too busy looking at everything through the viewfinder on your camera. Plus your pictures are going to be crap because you used your flash, which tons of signs clearly tell you not to do. On top of which you’re in the way of people who actually want to see the damn fish.
Anyway, that was our aquarium experience. I don’t mean to complain about it incessantly, because we actually really enjoyed it. There were just some really bizarre things about it.
ps. I forgot to mention: If you plan on going to the aquarium on a weekend day when it’s bound to be crowded, try deodorant. Just a tip.
Two other activities of note last weekend were Atlanta Pride and the High Museum. The Pride Festival in Atlanta goes on for 3 days in the park. We walked through on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, and it was packed both times. The cool thing about Pride in Atlanta for me was how ethnically diverse it was. Well, maybe diverse is being generous, but it was not a park full of white queers. Also it seemed like a lot of the businesses surrounding the park were on board with the festival, sporting rainbow flags or signs saying “Happy Pride!” The bar where we ended up on Saturday night displayed no overt acknowledgment of Pride, but was using rainbow coasters. 
The whole point of the trip originally was to go to the High Museum and see the Louvre and the Annie Leibovitz exhibits. While the Louvre stuff was spectacular, the Annie Leibovitz was what got to all of us the most. It intertwines her professional photographs with personal ones, and the result is this really powerful look into her life and who she is. It seemed particularly fitting that we were there during Pride weekend, because one of the most amazing parts of the exhibit was her documentation of the illness and death of Susan Sontag. It was hard to view, but at the same time I felt grateful that these two brilliant and passionate women could find each other, share lives together, and now in 2007 the public allows and is allowed this intimate look into their relationship. It’s that kind of thing that Pride is about, I think. 
