Holy crap, Steve Case Resigned from AOL today. He’s the co-founder of America Online, the world’s most despised ISP (sorry Narni), and worth about sixty bajillion dollars, but he’s no longer working there. Folks, this is the end of an era, and an interesting day for DC-based AOL, perhaps this means they’ll find a CEO that’s not unwilling to talk about business in non-jargon terms. In his departing statement, Case said “Leaving Time Warner’s Board will give me a greater opportunity to grow Revolution, including avoiding any potential conflicts of interest as Revolution moves into new areas,”

I really do loathe the term “grow the business” as it apparently was invented by an MBA student with a pathetic understanding of the English language, and Case is no exception here. What is it with this town that spawns such horrid phrases?!

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DC is playing host to the Serious Games Summit this week, which features discussion of “work” gaming, or in their jargon “non-entertainment gaming” including applications for healthcare, military uses, etc. Water Cooler Games is blogging the conference including this morning’s keynote about the art and science of Game Design. Looks like a spiffy thing if you’re interested in Real World Play and don’t mind the commute to the Crystal Gateway Marriott and shelling out $800.

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Monday pub quiz at Four Courts in Arlington goes on as usual on Halloween, except that they encourage you to dress up and will be giving extra prizes for the best costume.

Maybe you could dress up as James Joyce, the Irish writer who seems to be an answer in the picture round Every. Freaking. Week.

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Via DC Lagniappe: Now is a great time to start your holiday shopping- the Care for Kids discount card is valid this week through November 6. For $50, you get a card that gets you a 20% discount at all sorts of area retailers. All proceeds from the sale of the cards go to Childrens Hospital to help provide medical care for needy kids.

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As in years past, this Halloween weekend you’ll have the opportunity to party safely with a free taxi ride home thanks to WRAP. The Washington Regional Alcohol Program is sponsoring SoberRide. Running 8pm to 4am Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, you can take advantage of this service and party to your heart’s content (and your liver’s ruin, natch!) without fear.

With cab companies in DC, Maryland, and Virginia participating with free rides home up to $50, it’s well worth the wait. Call 1-800-200-8294 (TAXI). The fine print? You must be 21 (d’uh) and you can’t reserve in advance. Other than that, party like a rockstar…

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Hopefully by now you’re figured out a costume, I gave you plenty of warning, but have you figured out your party location? I’m still doing a bit of a last-minute party shuffle, balancing proximity to home with expected talent levels with an inebriation variable that’s expected to be high.

While I was thinking house party, I think plans will change yet again. Party Slave, a DC promoter, is talking up their Weekend in Hell par-tay Saturday night at ZucchaBar. They’re are giving away 3500 dollars worth of prizes and a Half Price Bar 8pm-10pm with free admission if you RSVP. Or as they put it so succinctly:

Forget that 10, 20 or 50+ charge you pay for any other party. Why pay that for some lame party when you can rockstar with us, get in for Free and spend it on 16oz cocktails?

And it looks like I’m not the only one impressed by their promo. The Wash Post slapped their seal of approval with this write-up:

Every now and then, someone sends us info for an event that makes us scratch our heads and ask, “Why didn’t anyone else think of this before?” The latest in this category is a Halloween party at Zucchabar called “Bridezilla,” with cash prizes for the best “Bride from Hell” or “Bridesmaid from Hell” costume. It’s organized by PartySlave, which has promoted James Bond parties at Vida and Cafe Asia and the ongoing ’80s nights at Zucchabar. Besides half-price drinks from 8 to 10, the night promises wandering magicians, human statues, giveaways of vouchers and a $1,000 Mexican vacation from STA Travel, and way too much taffeta. – Fritz Hahn (Washington Post)

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At 2pm, Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby on 5 charges including obstruction of justice and perjury.

At 3pm, Mayor For Life Marion Barry goes before the magistrate on charges of tax evasion.

There’s a word for this feeling I’ve got, I think it’s schadenfreude.

Only in DC.

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What’s going on in my hood!?!? SWAT team? That sounds serious!

Message from Alert DC
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:27:35
Police barricade at 1791 Lanier Pl., NW.
18th St. & Columbia Rd. NW has been blocked off.
SWAT en route.

Anybody got info? Damn, I wish Google’s Spy Eye in the Sky was real-time!

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Sure, Tai Shan is his real name, but to us he’s known as Butterstick, thanks to Tom & Catherine over at DCist. Sure, they’ll claim “editorial we” status and credit the site as a whole, but I’m not afraid to single out genius when I see it. Anyhow, if you want a sweet Cafe Press shirt featuring our dear butterstick, and a good way to donate to FONZ, head on over and pick one up, the el-cheapo t-shirts start at $10.

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Well, we’re back to the drinking and driving issue, but this time we’re headed to nearby Fairfax County, VA, where a judge there is throwing out DWI cases because of a presumption of guilt going into the trial. Virginia law says that driving are intoxicated if they test higher than .08 BAC, and that places an unfair burden on the plaintiff in the case.

So, essentially, he’s chucking the cases out because of the bad law. Of course, lots of people are up in arms over this, as it fails to punish someone for doing something society has deemed to be an offense punishable by prison time, hefty fines and suspended drivers’ licenses. MADD nearly burst a gasket when they found and we hear that they’re still just sitting in their chairs, rocking back and forth for comfort. And Judge O’Flaherty has also threatened to jail prosecutors when they attempt to argue their position on the charges and the law, which is problematic since it’s their job to prosecute violations of the law as they’re recorded on the books and put there by legislators.

Which is the stronger prescription, though? The Fifth Amendment, which protects people from self-incrimination, and the state law regarding alcohol content and testing?

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Get ready for a royal invasion (or at least, all the traffic and security hooha that goes along with it)!

Charles and Camilla, a.k.a. HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, will be in DC next week for a few days starting Wednesday. There’ll be a big to-do for them at the White House (the senior Bushies and QE2 are great pals) to bring some well-needed glamour to the federal city in the midst of all the current scandal.

You can read more about their jam-packed schedule at the Post…

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Stop procrastinating. You know what you wanna do, what you need to sdo, what you don’t care to do. Its time to switch into winter gear.

I gave in tonight myself. I finally went winter clothes shopping (where are you Kalikya Stockman?!) for hats, gloves, scarves and the like. Not want I wanted to do, but it was needed. On return home, I converted my closet to winter, putting away the good linen and tossing out the old t-shirts. Now its time for you to do the same.

Don’t hoard that ratty shirt through winter becasue you had a good memory with it in summer. Resist the urge to hold out for Indian summer, and you better not be the fool and think this is still shorts weather.

Winter is here. Embrace it.

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Warren Brown’s new Food Network show premiered tonight, and included a trip to Duff Goldman’s Charm City Cakes in Baltimore. They made a that was centered around a piece of either strong PVC or some painted metal conduit, and shaped like a cannon. So, yeah, part cake, part fire-arm! But it’s nice to see Warren and Duff get friendly, as I understand there was some animosity between the two of them. Brown is a natural on camera: friendly, well-spoken and fun to watch. Sadly, most of the show is him watching other people work, instead of him actually baking himself. Now, while I found the dessert restaurant at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, I’d rather see Warren hard at work. A good debut though, and something worthy of my Tivo’s attention, for sure.

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With the passing of Rosa Parks, now seems like a good time to revisit a local episode in the history of civil rights that didn’t involve a march on the Mall.

So I was out at Glen Echo Park again yesterday, and while I was there, I picked up a card with an interesting looking photo on it. (Yes, I know Tom just posted about Glen Echo recently, but it’s the site we’ve chosen for our wedding reception, so you can suck it up and learn something.)

The photo is of a black college student in a tie, sitting on one of the park’s carousel horses (a carousel rabbit, actually), being confronted by a white security guard. The confrontation looks civil, mostly words being exchanged, and not even particularly heated ones at that, but it was the back of the card that told the story.

The student was Marvous Saunders, part of a group led by Lawrence Henry, a divinity student at Howard University. He lead a group of students in a series of peaceful protests around the DC area that summer of 1960, including a sit-in on the carousel in Glen Echo. The students were told to leave the park or face arrest, as the park (privately owned at the time) was only open to white people.

For the next 10 weeks, the surrounding community joined with the students in protests outside of Glen Echo. Finally, the owners of the park announced (without much fanfare) that it would be open to black people as well the following season.

You can read the Washington Post’s story about it from last summer here.

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Yeah you, what are you gonna be on Saturday? You better have an idea by now as you don’t have much time left. By tomorrow, there will be no supplies left for witches or mummies, and nurses and devils will be hurting too.

Creative costumes and easy ones will be all that’s left. You could wear all black and cover yourself with those marshmallow peeps and be a chick magnet. You could wear dark glasses and carry a cane, and copy my greatest costume ever – a blind man. Wow, I squeezed a lot of Charmin that night.

So Saturday night, what are you gonna be?

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Sugar Rush with local baker extraordinaire debuts on the Food Network at 9:30pm tomorrow night. He’s making Chocolate Raspberry Parfaits which sound so very phenomenally delicious I might just go into a diabetic coma watching the show tomorrow night. Of course, I could just go over to Cake Love and get myself some cupcakes for the show tomorrow night so I don’t just spontaneously combust from food lust. Mmmmmmm….strawberry buttercream-frosted cupcakes….*drooool*

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Sweet Baby Jesus, what is that blue thing west of us?! Bad enough the green appears to have taken over the greater DC area for the day, but blue stuff too?! The Apocalypse is coming! Snow in October! Help me Jebus! Much like Wayan, I am a summer person, and I lament the coming of our frigid winter, though I know we have it good compared to, say, New York or Boston. It’s days like these that have me checking my couch cushions for spare change to fly somewhere warm.

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Considering it’s now seven days til All Hallow’s Eve (if you’re partying Saturday instead, it’s only five!), I thought I’d continue to do my part to freak you all out by telling a classic Wasington ghost story. Apart from President Lincoln’s haunting the White House, there is possibly no more famous local ghost story than that one that spawned the book and the movie, “The Exorcist.”

Everyone in DC is familiar with the “exorcist stairs” in Georgetown, featured in the film, and some might know that William Peter Blatty got the idea for the book from local news articles he read as a Georgetown student in the forties, about a possessed boy who lived in Mt. Rainier and had to be exorcised by a local priest. Supposedly the priest’s journal on the case was stored at the archdiocese. This journal features prominently in a story that is still told at my alma mater, Catholic University, where apparently the journal ended up being held under lock and key in a small room on campus, with a fiendish will of its own…

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Well, the first bear of the season is dead, felled at the hands of 8 year old Sierra Stiles, who won the local bear-hunting license lottery. Of course, this has animal rights’ groups all kinds of freaked out, which is what I find amusing. She’s getting the bear stuffed, if you were interested.

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When I come back in my next life, I want to come back as a corrupt academic in a University President’s job. What a sweet gig that is. Benny Ladner, in addition to getting to keep the stuff he used University funds to pay for, gets over $3 million in severance. Wow. What a fucking golden parachute that is. Apparently, he was pushing for almost twice that.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. $6 Mil? For embezzling shit from the university and using university funds to pay for your personal parties and travel junkets. Boy, it must be reeeeeal nice. Of course, when he left, he sent this jewel of an email:

“Nancy and I will always regard the opportunity we had to serve American University for eleven years as a great honor and privilege. We are especially grateful for the quiet but strong support expressed by so many friends, colleagues and students.”

Translation: Thanks suckers!

If I were a student at American, I’d be really, really pissed off that their tuition money was going to this asshole’s pockets

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