tryouts for DC Water's Water Drop mascot

I did not realize that Emanuel Briggs had been serving as Wendell the Water Drop.  He is likely eager to recruit a replacement to avoid having to wear "the suffocating costume in the bed of a pickup truck and wave maniacally in the merciless furnace of D.C. summertime" in the Capitol Pride parade.  That would be motivation enough for me!  Ha ha.  

Note that the tryouts are at the DC Water Bryant Street pumping station right here in the neighborhood.

I have included a few paragraphs of this Washington Post article below.  You can click on the link to read the entire article.  

The photograph here is from the Post article.

Searching for mascot, D.C. Water tests the competition

By Dan Zak, Published: February 17

...

Emanuel Briggs, a community outreach manager for D.C. Water, cut the music after 56 seconds. Reilly lifted the costume off his body and exhaled dramatically.

“You want some water?” Briggs asked.

“Yes,” Reilly said, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Briggs dribbled an ounce of D.C. tap water into a small plastic condiment cup. Reilly sipped it.

“What makes you stand out among every one else?” Briggs asked.

“I’m a team player,” Reilly said.

Thus concluded the second audition for the first-ever public sweepstakes to be Wendell (or Wendy), the royal-blue anthropomorphized droplet with felt skin and a wide-eyed look of frozen delight.

For the past two years, Briggs has been Wendell.

“The woman who did it before — when she left I joked about how I could do a better job, and I got stuck with it,” Briggs says. His most harrowing experience was last year’s Capital Pride parade, when he had to run up and down 23rd Street NW in the suffocating costume and jump into the bed of a pickup truck and wave maniacally in the merciless furnace of D.C. summertime.

       

 ....

                                                                                                      

Auditions continued Friday, with a handful of citizens dancing to Rihanna and answering questions like “What are your thoughts and feelings about D.C. tap water?”  A second round of tryouts is planned for Tuesday.  By March, in time for D.C. Water’s next town hall, there will be a new soul inside Wendell (or Wendy), and his or her job will be to make us smile about water (which we routinely dismiss with a couple gulps) and therefore life (which we routinely dismiss with a succession of breaths).

Of course, one of the comments is snarky:

they have a sewer overflow that dumps directly into the potomac -- do we really need a mascot?  Here’s my mascot and motto, "from your a$$ straight to your glass!" -dystentery the happy amoeba