Legacy articles

No TV in The Bathroom Now!

When you are standing in the men’s room of new Old Dominion Brewery in the Convention Center, look up.

Is that loud TV blaring down at you, disrupting your quiet piss point? Then do a Metroblogging moment: pull the power cord.

Urination should be free from commercial interruption corruption.

Even if you have to stand on the urinals to reach the electrical outlet.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

A banner day for legal idiocy

Normally it takes idiot homophobia for our government to make me ashamed to live in Virginia, but both the judicial branch and the legislative branch are conspiring to make me frustrated with driving law too. Maybe the two groups can come together to ban homosexuals from driving, call it the Fighting Against Gay Driving In the Exurbs act or something – they like clever names.

On the “your choice of ice storms” front, the judge in my favorite reckless driving case has reduced the reckless jackass’ punishment to, effectively, time served. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that someone who thinks nothing of endangering the lives of other drivers also thinks little of the laws that govern paying for the things you purchase. When the time came to release her they discovered an open warrant for her arrest since she “was wanted in Hernando, Miss., for “insufficient funds,” or writing bad checks in July 2005.” Here’s hoping she actually paid for the drink she threw.

Over at the legislative end of the short bus, we have lawmakers pushing a bill to put penalties in place for teens who use their cellphones when driving. Through some mechanism that I do not understand, driving while using a cellphone is perfectly legal and okay unless you have an excess of hormones and are going through puberty, in which case it’s dangerous and should be punished. Obviously this is the case, since if it was just a matter of experience the law would instead specify people who have less than two years driving under their belt rather than teens.

Or maybe it’s only dangerous when it’s done by people who are 15, 16 or 17 and therefor not yet old enough to vote out cowardly lawmakers. If driving while using your phone is dangerous – and I am open to being convinced – then it should be banned, period. This kind of thing is just chickenshit posturing at the expense of the one group powerless against you. For shame.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

duct tape, plastic sheeting, Meow Mix…

Here’s a bit of post-Katrina fallout I hadn’t heard about. Last year, Congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, which requires local jurisdictions to include in their emergency evacuation plans means to evacuate pets along with people. As a result, counties around DC are coming up with all sorts of pet evacuation contingencies, including mobile centers stocked with pet carriers and supplies so that people don’t have to abandon their pets in the event of an emergency.

It’s controversial, of course, and I’m sure there will be more than a few of you who will chime in to tell me how ridiculous it is, but I think it’s great, and here’s why:

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading

Legacy articles

Saluting the Hardest Working Men in DC

Yeah, so they wake you up at 6am on trash day. Or worse they skip you and your back yard stinks for the weekend.

But what a foul city we would have without these pillars of urban civilization?

Garbage Collectors, the Trash Man, Waste Removal Technicians.

The men (and maybe women) who take away our refuse, who clean our city, who day after day are elbow deep in the foul and filth that you and I wish be gone.

Could you do the work, regardless of pay? Would you live long in a city without them?

Then do you appreciate their daily task? I do. I salute the hardest working men in Washington DC: the men feeding the garbage truck this morning.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Giant thinks we’re stupid

Yep, it’s your opportunity to SAVE WITH YOUR BONUS CARD. Normally $6, a bundle of firewood is available for 2 for $12.

Oh wait, that deal expired on 2/15. Sorry, you’re back to paying $6 a bundle.

Maybe they mean SAVE your brain cells and don’t think about how moronic this is?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Water Fountains Off – I am Parched!

Do you enjoy long walks around the National Mall? Or, like me, do you run the Mall?

On your sojourns do you expect to find water fountains that work? Free thirst-quenching refreshment ready for your consumption?

Well don’t expect it anytime soon. As I learned this weekend, the water fountains on the Mall are off now. Off till spring at least.

Oh, and we’re not talking the first days of spring either. As my broken water fountain photo pool from April of last year shows, its gonna be damn near summer before the Mall will be de-parching.

Ah, but the concession stands are always open.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Absolutely Fabulous

This photo by Flickrite cornflakegirl does it all for me, but I’m guessing it might rub some people the wrong way. The grit is just pouring out of my computer screen on this one, and my eyes don’t know where to look next. The lipstick on “her” cigarette, the ash fighting for its life against gravity, the caked on makeup covering up the peach fuzz on her cheek, the penciled in eyebrows, the giant fake eyelashes, the cheap earring dangling in a mess of blonde hair…it draws me in and intrigues me as a person and as a photographer. The cropping is great on this and the fact that the subject isn’t looking at the camera puts even more of an emphasis on her features.

For me this photo is timeless and is one of the best ones I’ve come across recently by one of our local photographers. Be sure to check out some of her other excellent photos.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Satellite Monopoly, or Stern Returning to D.C.?

http://thefuntimesguide.com/2005/06/satellite_radio.phpI’m sure many of the wired in folks caught that XM Radio and Sirius are planning to merge… but how does it affect the media market in D.C.? Will D.C. loose it’s new media muscle to New York, or will, if approved by the FCC and SEC, provide for growth in this rather odd media format.

I know I abandoned the D.C. radio market once I got my iPod and WETA started playing roulette with their programming (as was the demise, the first time ’round of WHFS and other stations). I’ve cut the final thread with the gift of an XM subscription for Christmas. I’ve heard complaints from a number of people when discussing this topic about choice (limited playlists of themed channels, such as jazz and film music) to incomplete coverage (NHL games), will a merged entity do any better, or will it mirror the cable industry with a lack of choice and rising costs. I know Verizon has been kicking ass with their FiOS rollout in Metro DC. So competition, in at least this business school case, actually works. How would it work for something is a little less demand?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

So How’d You Celebrate President’s Day?

So, with a holiday most associated with weird sales at the mall and made up special deals at auto dealerships.. how did you, the loyal DC Metblogs reader, celebrate President’s Day?

Gen. George Washington is celebrating his 275th birthday this Thursday, and Mount Vernon is gussying itself up for the occasion. This past Sunday, an President’s Day/Black History Month themed American Dad aired with guest shots of Abe Lincoln and the fabled Smithsonian Peanut Museum.

A number of folks from the DC area seemed to drive as far away as they could in one day and headed to an almost perfect day on the ski slopes, something January (or December, November.. oh, heck you get it) never offered. Some folks probably just bummed it at home (or at work for those private sector folks) and had their own “Butt-Numb-A-Thon” watching hours of TV or Movies. (But remember kids, you can catch all the Best Picture Nominees in one twelve hour session (yes, twelve) this Saturday at selected theaters…your own personal Oscar-themed “Butt-Numb-A-Thon”)

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Excessive? Sounds about right to me.

Although Wayan has privately begged the rest of us to leave the car&snow bitching behind after this weekend, lest we become “MetroDriverBitching DC blog” I am going to throw this one last one out there. The Post ran an article yesterday on the “McMissile” case, a cute little term to describe Jessica Hall’s throwing a drink into another car on the highway. Her outbreak has resulted in a felony conviction under 18.2-154, apparently, and she has gotten the minimum sentence (according to WaPo, but not the above VA law link), two years. The Post quotes Hall as saying “Two years! What did I do?”

What did you DO? Well, with your 6-months-pregnant sister in your car, you slewed your vehicle onto the shoulder, accelerated up next to another driver, then threw something into their car. Aside from the obvious property damage, what if they’d reacted to that with shock and accelerated unexpectedly or jerked the wheel, striking another car or, Grod forbid, a pedestrian/road worker? An automobile is two tons of motor-driven metal and killing someone with one isn’t too hard.

“Now people are going to see me as an angry, road rage, convicted felon. And it really upsets me,” Hall said. Well, golly, why would they see you that way? Maybe because that’s exactly what you are. You were reckless with the lives of the people in your car, the car you threw the drink into, and all the cars around them. Your most immediate victims are more generous than I – perhaps that’s no surprise – and think community service would have been just fine, but I personally will be glad to have two years where I know I won’t be sharing the road with you. Here’s hoping the judge doesn’t reduce your time.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Celebrate The Presidents: Millard Fillmore

Today is Presidents Day, and as a result, many area businesses, including the Federal Government, are closed, and this is one of those rare late winter three day weekends. That is, unless you work somewhere that only offer the Original Six holidays, in which case you’re cursing the rest of the non-working populous today. The holiday began in celebration of George Washington, America’s First President, and the General of her armies during the Revolutionary War. Most of the time, we see celebrations of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on this day, their contributions to the history of the Union are quite significant, and after all, they had birthdays this month. Today, however, I want to draw attention to a different President of the United States of America: Millard Fillmore, the 13th President.

On the death of President Zachary Taylor in July of 1850, then Vice President Millard Fillmore took office as the second unelected President of the union. Taylor’s entire cabinet submitted their resignations and went their way, and Fillmore was left to fill all the vacancies. His first choice was Daniel Webster for Secretary of State, and the two of them marched through the Capitol five bills that would forever change the United States:

  • Admit California to the United States
  • Settle the Texas boundary with New Mexico
  • Admit New Mexico as a Territory
  • The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which had significant consequences for Americans in the Northeast, and could be credited in part with the Civil War that followed.)
  • The Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia (which is really why I chose him)

Fillmore & Webster did all five of these in scant 90 days, making pretty much every Congress thereafter look like a bunch of lolligagging buffoons. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was initially an attempt at settling the slavery issue between the abolitionist North and the slave-owning South, but it turned into an uneasy truce as the northerners resented the idea of returning the South’s slaves.

President Fillmore can be credited with the abolition of slavery, the admittance of California as a State (largely due to the gold strike in 1849) and the admittance of New Mexico as a Territory, further expanding the borders of the US. Toward the end of his presidency, he sent Admiral Perry to pursue trade routes with then-closed-state Japan. Much of this information was gleaned from Wikipedia, though, honestly, most of their page is word for word from his White House bio, so I figure we’re pretty safe on this one, yeah?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Last Chance: Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006

Today is your last opportunity to see this year’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition features the work of 51 artists selected as finalists in the Portrait Gallery’s first national portrait competition.

My favorite is the Olmec inspired Large Head by Nina Levy:

Olmec head

Now just imagine this work as she describes it in her Artist Statement:

This head is a portrait of my son Archer at almost two years old. I originally sculpted it as a part of a larger site-specific installation called Toss. In February of 2006, the head was suspended in the center of the two-story gallery space at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. It was flanked front and back by a male and a female figure, both headless and swinging as if on a trapeze, tossing the head between them.

Ain’t that trippy? And just one more reason to get your ass to the National Portrait Gallery now!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Check out those glutes… directly

Great news – the BODIES exhibit is coming to our area in April and it’ll be in the old Newseum space in Rosslyn. The Post article about it was filled with blah-blah-blah about the controversy that never seems to die down around the various polymer-preserved bodies shows, but what you should really know is that this one is an amazing look into our bodies. I got to see the exhibit in New York City last fall and it’s nothing short of astounding, and that’s from someone who, as the son of a pathology nurse, probably has gotten to see more inner workings than the average bear. Just the display of a full lung circulatory system with all the surrounding bits removed is worth the price of admission. If you’ve ever, say, lurched your clumsy self across a half-frozen parking lot, you might find it hard to believe there’s that much fine & delicate machinery inside you.

With regards to the question of what level of consent may or may not have been received from the former controllers of these displayed bodies, I suggest this: get the hell over it. As far as I’m concerned, every one of you people who shows this over-enthusiastic level of interest in what’s done with your carrying case after you’re finished inhabiting are is hurting the people who keep walking the earth after you’re gone. Barring organ donation, I think education – even in the guise of entertainment – is a perfectly good use of our leftover meat.

Before I hear from a single one of you about prisoner treatment in China, where many of these bodies came from, tell me: have you signed up to be an organ donor yet?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Sondheim obits

I caught the obituary for Walter Sondheim Jr in Friday’s Post, but I was just reminded of it by an entry in a weekly email newsletter that I get called This Is True. True’s Publisher, Randy Cassingham, runs a weekly bit at the end of it which he calls his “honorary unsubscribe,” where he pays homage to recent deaths of people who he thinks aren’t getting the press they deserve in their passing. This week’s is Mr Sondheim, who I happily think he’s a bit wrong about not getting enough attention. Friday’s Post obit is of decent size and there’s a New York Times piece as well.

All the obits contain a lot of talk about Mr Sondheim’s role in integrating Baltimore, and it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come in not a lot of time. It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t so long ago we had two very distinct and very paths laid out in our society. I remember as a kid in the late 70s being in a Sears in Coral Gables and my father pointing out to me the spot on the wall above the two water fountains where you could see there used to be something attached to the wall. The something being plaques that said “Whites” and “Coloreds,” and which my father clearly remembered, since he’d been chased off as a child for drinking from the “colored” fountain. It’s been almost thirty years since he told me that story, which is farther in the past for me than it was for him when he relayed it.

Those fifty years combined can seem like a lot when you spend most of your day thinking how far off next month’s vacation is, but they shoot by quick. Cassingham’s piece has a fun quote that’s not in the Post or Times obit. When the MD school board president of the time threatened to overturn Sondheim’s integration after the fact, Sondheim told him “that he could come to Baltimore and try to unscramble the egg that we had scrambled if he wanted to.” A great quip, in my book, and a great man.

Also of note to those of us in the area is all the work Sondheim did towards the Inner Harbor revitalization. School integration in Baltimore may not have impacted any of us reading this, but if you’ve gone to an Orioles game or the Baltimore Aquarium you’ve been a beneficiary of his efforts as well. Personally I find Baltimore delightful, for all its flaws, and I’ve considered living there on many an occasion. I’m more drawn to Fells Point than Inner Harbor, but it’s not hard for me to understand why someone would want to spend their retirement working to improve the fortunes of Charm City. Thanks, Mr Sondheim, for both the product of your hard work and the inspiration.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

How did we miss this?

I was looking for a link so I could talk briefly about the upcoming BODIES exhibit in the old Newseum space and came across this story from January.

D.C. police believe a naked construction worker who fell to his death this week slipped and fell four stories down an elevator shaft.

Joseph Oliver, 23, of La Plata was discovered about 6 a.m. Wednesday in the basement elevator shaft area of the Newseum, which is being built at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, officials said.

Authorities said it was unclear why he was naked, according to C.V. Morris, head of the department’s Violent Crimes Branch.

No sign of any follow-ups in the Post on this one. Damned weird – of all the times I’ve been naked at my job it’s NEVER been near an elevator shaft.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

National Zoo Asian Trail Exhibit Now Open

Just in time for a winter wandering, the Asia Trail at the National Zoo is now open. Feel free to gawk at the seven Asian species shivering in the cold:

  • sloth bears
  • fishing cats
  • red pandas
  • a Japanese giant salamander
  • clouded leopards
  • Asian small-clawed otters
  • and giant pandas

No word yet on if the otters get to play with the salamander – I think that would be a short, but tasty play time.

The red panda wasn’t playing so much as pacing when this crowd checked him out last weekend. He looked like a mental ward patient, walking back and forth on a little raised ledge until he spotted a grapefruit. Then he was all about eating the fleshly fruit, a welcomed break to his confinement.

As you can tell, I worry about the larger animals in the zoo. Often they look more insane prisoners than happy-go-lucky exotic species. Yes, they live a long and pampered life, but would you want to live in a zoo?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Another Fatal Bus Accident

Last night in Southeast DC, a woman in her 20s was fatally struck by a W2 bus, bringing the number of fatal bus accidents involving WMATA to three in 2007, and to four within 8 months. The accident earlier in the week that claimed the lives of two Alexandria women prompted WMATA’s new general manager John Catoe to promise safety training for all drivers on a yearly basis.

Alright, who thinks they’ll take it seriously? I hated at work lectures about safety and disaster awareness, they were a chore and never worth the time involved. How about hiring drivers who will pay some attention on the roads and not use the area’s citizenry as a grand game of target practice? So, how DO we fix something like this? Is there a non-bureaucratic solution that will step up safety amongst the drivers? The last thing we need is a heavy-handed council reaction trying to quell the frantic response of the citizenry. How can WMATA fix its problems?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Legacy articles

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Year of the Pig!

Tomorrow starts the Chinese New Year and as you can see, Tom is all excited.

He is licking 10 year baijao – Chinese moonshine – as part of his NYE party

How might you celebrate the Lunar New Year tonight?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs