For those of you keeping score at home, Cakelove’s Warren Brown will have his debut as a television host on October 26th when Sugar Rush premieres.

And yes, Cakelove has finally launched their shiny new website as well. The single ladies (and some of the single men) of DC will be pleased to note that the new site has an extensive biography section on Warren, with photos.

Oh, and just because I know some of you out there are in the same mode as I am:
Cakelove tiered wedding cake that serves up to 80: $400
Cakelove cupcake tree that serves 75: $270

Just in case you were wondering.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The illustrious DC Web Women have opened their meeting this month to the public- Join them at the Clarendon Apple Store tomorrow night at 6 PM for a presentation on the hows and whys of podcasting!

The meeting is free and you can RSVP here.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I’ve always liked fishing. I’m above the water, they’re below the water, right up to the point where I sweep a big trout out of the lake and bash his skull with the oar. It’s a good mix. However, the snakehead fish that’s come to inhabit the Potomac Basin of late blurs that line. See, they can walk. On land. And run away. See, that’s not fair, dammit. Apparently the snakehead problem in the area is getting worse and worse, as they caught 80 snakeheads in the Potomac on Sunday, both a record, and only just a small portion of the population. Catching them is hard work, too: “We would throw one in the cooler, two others would jump out and we’d have to chase them through the woods.” But, as the article says, it could be lucrative if you’re not catching them with treble hooks or a net, as there’s a $50 bounty on each snakehead caught legally.

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I’m one of those frequent business travelers you read about, jetsetting about the country, sitting in coach (because my miles are never good enough to beat those super platinum jewel-encrusted elite members ahead of me in the rankings) and occupying airports for hours on end. The biggest question I have to ask though is: How is it that Dulles doesn’t have an airport wifi network? Baltimore has one. JFK, too. So does SMF and DFW and SFO and OAK and all of the other airports I’ve been in recently. Sure, some are for-pay, and some are free of charge, but how is it that one of the busiest airports on the east coast doesn’t have basic connectivity for their travelers? How is that an airport so close to MAE-EAST can’t even cobble together a DSL circuit and some access points?

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It’s three weeks before Halloween!

This means, if you’re anything like me and my gaggle of masquerade-crazed friends, you need to get your act together and decide on a costume.

This year my husband and I are hosting our seventh annual Halloween party, a bash making its comeback after two years of interruption. This puts extra pressure on us to come up with the best costumes. So off we went this weekend in search of Halloween fun.

And one of the best places in the city to get your gear is Backstage – whose front room is filled to the brim with pre-packaged costumes, lower level filled with rental options, and back room filled with more accessories, wigs, and masks than you can shake a be-jeweled eyelash at. I picked up a fetching “young hero” moustache for my cross-dressing costume (not to be revealed til the party! I said there was pressure!) and spent the afternoon trimming away – how do men drink with moustaches hanging over their lips? I have no idea, but I guess I’ll find out!

That’s the beauty of Halloween, the one time of the year you can completely act like a fool and pretend to be something else. Fantastic. Get ready!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

After spending two hours watching an evil samurai slowly consumed by his own bloodlust, it was time for a little light entertainment. So of course since we were already dressed up for a night of Japanese horror, we decided to visit a goth-industrial club…

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You would think that as I work for an association whose sole function is to influence public policy and hobnob with the goonies of government that I wouldn’t have to work on a federal holiday. Alas, you would be wrong.

This morning my husband rolled over for more snoozing as I kissed his cheek. He gets to stay home. Then I shuffled out of my house to be greeted by a street full of parked cars, completely unheard of on a workday. Damn my neighbors, snug in their beds! They get to stay home too.

Stomping off the bus I had to walk past puffy piles of dirty foam, a fallen banner proclaiming “Foam Party Sunday!” Three-day holiday weekend. Yeah. Rock on. All those partygoers get to stay home, nursing their hangovers.

Now I’m in the office and everyone who didn’t sacrifice one of our precious vacation days is griping about how it’s a ghost town and how nothing will get done today and how unfair worklife is – pretty comical.

Columbus really has fallen on hard times.

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Tom from unrequited narcissism has made an awesome google maps hack for Metro. You can now view stations and lines (in their appropriate color!) as an overlay of Google Maps. Very very slick, and super useful. Aren’t open APIs just the bee’s knees?

[Update] Tom’s moved it over to a new home: DCist Maps

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It’s pretty clear that the world would be a poorer place, information-wise, if it wasn’t for those geniuses at SixApart. After all, today is Movable Type’s fourth birthday, and without it, we’d be manually hacking together HTML pages to make Metroblogging work at all. Thanks, SixApart, for four great years of quality software and here’s to many more to come!

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…to our friends at Metroblogging Lahore who are dealing with massive destruction in the wake of a 7.6 Earthquake.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I’m hearing reports that the Washington Monument has been evacuated due to a bomb threat…anyone know what’s going on?

WTOP says:

WASHINGTON – Police are on the scene and checking out the possibility of a threat at the Washington Monument.
Constitution and Independence Avenues between 15th and 17th Streets have been blocked off so that police can check the area.
The Washington Monument was evacuated Friday afternoon after the threat was received. It is temporarily closed.

A note from DC EMA says they also evacuated the Rayburn building briefly:

US Capitol police reports that they had evacuated the Rayburn Building due to alarm sounding. But all clear was given and all are returning.

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It seems like we have a veritable cornucopia of film festivals going on right now!
There’s a lot of choice, so to confuse (ahem, help) you further, I’ve got another one to put on the radar: The Washington, Italia festival.

Running October 11-16 at the Loews Georgetown, this looks to be an interesting line-up for fans of Italian cinema, co-sponsored by industry giant Cinecitta. Unfortunately I’ll miss Saturday the 15th’s showing of Martin Scorsese’s “My Voyage to Italy.” It’s a great introduction to the must-see’s of the genre, with Scorsese providing fascinating commentary to clips of his personal favorites. It will be introduced by the amazing Dante Ferretti, long one of my absolute favorite art directors/production designers.

It also looks like Franco Nero will be in town to introduce several of his films, and judging from the pictures up on the festival’s website, he’s still quite dashing with those dazzling baby blues – perhaps I may run into him around town next week…. ah, perhaps…

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Politics being what it is these days, I’m not at all surprised to see wingnuts from both sides trading bizarro accusations including the one that DCist blogged this morning: that the protestors last weekend were exposed, on purpose, to Tularemia bacteria and that it was done either as an experiment in crowd control, or to specifically harm protestors.

What does surprise me is that DCist, a site that I enjoy, is giving these barking moonbats some level of credibility by writing about them at all. Maybe I’m just missing the sarcasm tag, maybe I’m just not seeing this as the joke it’s meant to be? While I do dislike the actual hassle that protesting creates, and while I may encourage the restraining of the protestor-who-broke-into-citibank, I don’t think this is a reasoned response from government, or any response at all. To claim, without even remote evidence, that the government is behind this is irresponsible, but isn’t giving voice to the ravings of lunatics also irresponsible?

Update: Martin from DCist weighs in below the cut in the comments section. I guess he was joking after all, phew!

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The Washington Times is reporting that DC will use eminent domain to gather parcels of land of the Stadium from property owners in Southeast. Of course, the owners are saying the offers they’re getting from the city could be considered paltry at best. So here we sit, needing a stadium by 2008, unable to come to a good deal with residents in the neighborhood we want to build in, so instead of renegotiating, or rethinking the plan, we’re just going to use the crappiest decision the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime to make a land grab against the District’s own people.

Of course, this, back to back with this week’s CityPaper cover story on the ballpark we’re going to build in its place makes me wonder if we should be trusting the District to do it right in the first place.

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So, over the past few weeks, I’ve seen signs pop up over Arlington for DC Festival with Luis Palau. Signs on busses in DC, roadside advertising, all manner of things. I was excited, thinking “Oh sweet, Latin music is the theme of some sort of giant community festival on the Mall, how exciting! I can’t wait!”

Fortunately I went to go look at the website before just showing up expecting latin rhythms and awesome dancing.

It’s not a celebration of Latin music at all. It’s the equivalent of a giant tent-meeting on the Mall, featuring Luis Palau, a famous evangelical Christian minister. I’ve now seen him referred to as “the Latin Billy Graham,” who travels the country with a skateboard park, BMX bicyclers and Christian Rock Bands like tobyMac, Third Day and CeCe Winans.

If you were thinking, like I was, “Sweet! Latin music!” you will not get what you are expecting. If you were thinking “I totally wanna see some sweet skating for Jesus” then you’re in the right ballpark.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

So if any of you have been following the coverage of the window at Victoria’s Secret in Tyson’s, you might be wondering from the rather innocuous photo the Post put up the other day what all the fuss is about.

Well, lucky you, the Traditional Values Coalition has taken photos for your morally indignant enjoyment.

Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll still be wondering what all the fuss is about when mannequins are wearing lingerie in- the horrors!- a lingerie store.

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Chris Needham over at Capitol Punishment is shinning the light on what’s going on with the stadium we’ve got, and the stadium we’re gonna build here in DC for the Nats:

The already-delayed lease negotiations for the stadium will be even later. Today, MLB’s thug-in-chief, Jerry Reinsdorf claimed that he’s too busy with the White Sox to negotiate properly, so that it’s highly unlikely that the stadium lease will be signed before the end of the post-season, and, by extension, that the Nats won’t have new owners til the end of the World Series. (Remember, the offseason truly gets started two weeks after the World Series.)

While RFK has its charm, it certainly could use some updates that I’m not sure can be easily retrofitted: telephone lines throughout the stadium allowing for processing of credit cards at vendors, better concessions equipment, sightlines for all those sits underneath the overhang. All season long, the Nats have languished under the thumbs of the owners of Major League Baseball, all at the expense of the fans. Of course, we may not get owners until well after the World Series, meaning less time to rethink and reorganize in the winter off months. Needham’s right: “And, as in all cases involving sports business, it’s the fans who get it in the keister.”

Spot on.

Of course, he’s also got stuff on Comcast and Peter Angelos, which is absolutely worth reading.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Pirate Ship on 14th

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

Gah, people, the posts I have been saving up until I had time to post them…

As seen on 14th street Tuesday- the license plate frame says, “Too Close for Cannons – Prepare to be Boarded.”

Got to invite this guy to be on my pub quiz team…

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Taking a brief respite from the crazed existence that is my job, I sought refuge in the Washington Post’s website, hoping for something interesting, and found myself reading what read like marketing pablum and politician-speak. In the Taylor Behl case:

“The scope of this investigation has narrowed significantly,” Monroe said. He said police had “a very targeted focus.”

“I have the utmost confidence that we’re going to be able to resolve this case,” Monroe said.

But, what does that mean? There’s no depth there, no insight, no follow-up. No imagination or creativity. And I’m supposed to pay for the privilege of reading the dead tree edition?

Regarding the PSP Trojan:

Symantec’s announcement also notes that, by default, PSPs can’t even play any software beyond Sony-authorized releases — that is, you’d have to hack your PSP to allow this trojan to get on board.

Thank you, Washington Post, for some real hard-hitting reporting to rivet my attention this afternoon. How about you send me the press releases and I’ll just read them.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Well, Ovechkin may well be the wunderkind he was made out to be. He scored twice in his first NHL game, including the game-winning goal against the Blue Jackets at MCI. While it wasn’t a sell-out, only 2,000 seats were empty tonight, perhaps giving the folks in management a few positive vibes for the season. Amazingly enough, all five goals in the game were scored in a ten minute span in the middle of the 2nd period. Looks like the new offense rules are working…sort of.

Congrats to Alexander Ovechkin on his first two goals (and one of them a game winner), welcome to DC, Alexander, keep up the good work and the town will reward you with anonymity. Fail us, though, and you’ve seen what we do to politicians we don’t like? It’s worse for sports figures. Ask Marty Schottenheimer or maybe even Steve Spurrier.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs