If you’re not yet familiar with the concept of churrascaria, you are likely a vegan, or perhaps someone who’s been living under a rock for the last ten years. It’s a Brazilian-style barbeque feast, featuring what can only be described as a festival of meat. As it’s been implemented in the States by groups like Texas de Brazil and Fogo de Chão, gaúchos dressed in traditional garb bring you meat after meat after meat after meat after meat until you inadvertently explode, or you turn over the serving dot on your table.

The serving dot is a bit of an interesting phenomenon for a restaurant. When you’re seated, each person at the table is issued a serving dot, one side is red, one side is green. Flipping the dot results in a stampede of gaúchos bringing you everything from sausage to leg of lamb to filet mignon wrapped in bacon. It’s all carved directly from a long skewer to your plate, by every passing gaúcho. Of course, there’s also a salad bar, so if you’re not doing Atkins, you can get a huge salad, or maybe some caprese or some soup, or even possibly some seared ahi tuna. Prepare yourself, though, when you flip that dot over, as the gaúchos will come without ceasing until you flip that dot again. Remember, also, that everything is coated in rock-salt before it’s roasted, in the traditional brazilian style. This results in steak and pork that’s phenomenal, but lamb that loses its subtlety.

We had a great time at Texas de Brazil out in Fairfax, and though the bill was a little high for just two, I don’t think I’ll need to eat again for at least three or four days. Oh, and remember to have the crème de papaya. It’s fantastic.

Texas de Brazil (warning, website has sound)
11750 Fair Oaks Shopping Center
Fairfax, VA

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

All students who took Advanced Placement exams this year at Wicomico High School may have to retake them – the school accidentally recycled every single one.

School administrators told several families Friday that this spring’s AP exams had been inadvertently destroyed.

Families were told by phone and a letter Friday that the school has requested The College Board provide a retest opportunity. The College Board is considering that request, according to Faye Wilson, school district spokeswoman.

Allow me to say that it surprised me not at all that they elected to inform them families by phone and letter. I am somewhat shocked that they didn’t decide to do it from an undisclosed location. I think Cheney isn’t using his.

And hey, College Board? Don’t be a bunch of douchebags. It’s not the kids or their families’ fault that these tests went missing. Not only does a qualifying AP result help kids get through college faster but it can be a significant savings. If any of you wanted to contact them and express your opinion on the matter there’s a web contact form here or, better yet, write or call.

The College Board
45 Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023-6992
(212) 713-8000

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

My car is 11 years old – not ancient but far from brand new. When the time came to do the emissions inspection I was a little hesitant. It had passed its last inspection, last year in Massachusetts, but all you need is one sensor to malfunction for the test to fail.

Fortunately, my car passed the test. The folks at the service station entered our vehicle’s information and test results in their computer and by the time my lovely wife got home to renew our registration online, the test information was right there, already in the system. The process was nearly seamless and she was done in minutes.

In other places I lived, you had to go through all sorts of machinations to make this kind of thing happen, between buying unnecessary parts from the mechanic and greasing him up to pass a car that should pass anyway. For a while I sold car parts and knew enough mechanics that I could get someone to pass an old-ass car that shouldn’t. You do favors, they do favors.

I’m glad those days are over. I’m glad to have a decent car and decent friends and not be dependent on doing favors to skirt the law. With today’s computer technology, I am not even sure if I could benefit from being in my colleagues’ good graces, as I used to do.

Let’s face it – mechanics don’t make any money on this type of thing. It’s a loss leader, or hopefully a break-even leader to get people to buy other products and services. We are at their mercy on some level, hoping to get a square deal. It’s a blessing to know a good mechanic, both in skill and spirit.

Thanks, Arlington County, for helping to make this a painless process, and thanks to all the good, honest service stations in the area. We only see you when we are in need of something and we appreciate you doing a heck of a job for us. Folks – if you know a good mechanic, send him/her a shoutout by leaving the station name in the comments here. It will help all of us, knowing that we can get a good deal when we are most desperate.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Local media guru Andy Carvin posted a video of Kong Nay, who is a master of the Chapei, which is something like a Cambodian folk guitar. What struck me about this was how familiar the music seemed. Definitely different from our music but somehow it resonated with my experience of traditional improvisational music we have here in the US.

The video was shot at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. If you haven’t been down there yet, get on down and see something really incredible. Only one more day remains before the Festival wraps up and you have to wait another year for entertainment like this. You can’t beat it – free culture. If they only had free food it would be perfect, but that’s asking a little much.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

What! you ask, DC has an Italian festival? Once upon a time, DC had a Little Italy right downtown, around Holy Rosary Church on 3rd St NW. That neighborhood is mostly office and judicial buildings today, but since 1999 the DC Italian community has used that same stretch of 3rd St for their Italian Festival, sponsored by the church itself and a couple of related Italian cultural societies. Food, music, fun, crafts, history — think of it as an extension of the folklife festival, but with calzones. And Ferraris.

Festa Italiana DC is tomorrow (Sunday), from 11:30 AM to 5:30 PM at 3rd and F St NW. I’ll be there. Stuffing my face.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The Arlington Community Role Model (CRM) Program, which aims to bring young adults into the fold of civic life here in Arlington, is celebrating another successful year. What a great program, I thought, upon reading about it. Unfortunately, I am pretty much at the top end of the age spectrum and already involved in enough community and professional activities to tire out a racehorse, but a lot of you young people who get on the internets to look at the blogs are well within the range of ages.

Why not go and report back how things went? I think it’s a super idea. Most people in their 20s and 30s are lost when it comes to civic life, partly because of a dreadful civic education in high school and college but also because at that age many people don’t take us seriously because of our youth.

Here is a great way to get involved in the community, learn about what’s happening in your own backyard and connect with other civic-mind folks in our community. If nothing else, it’s an interesting evening with some free food.

Read on:

Come help CRM celebrate another successful year of connecting young adults (20s and 30s) with the Arlington community. Join us on July 11th at the Eleventh Street Lounge for an informal evening with County Board Member J. Walter Tejada. Doors open at 7:30, short program at 8:00 PM. Come out on the eleventh to eleventh and enjoy the low key vibe, seasonal appetizers, and meet other community minded young Arlingtonians!!! All are welcome, please RSVP Here.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Fire Hydrant

Originally uploaded by Oh So Koooky.

With just 2500 fire hydrants left to test, DC’s Fire Chief Dennis Rubin says 14% of DC’s fire hydrants just don’t work. 14% of the 7,000 they’ve tested would be just under a thousand broken fire hydrants. Good God, folks. That’s insane.

That’s 1 in 7 hydrants out of service. Count seven fire hydrants near your house, and 1 of them won’t work, and when the fire department shows up to put out the house fire, you’re pretty much boned.

C’mon, WASA, get it together!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

When I was a kid my dad would always whistle a tune that I’d never heard. I chalked it up to being “an old person thing” and never asked him what the song was called or why he liked it so much. But unlike most of my childhood memories which are forever gone, that one will stick with me to the grave. The name of that song, “La Vie En Rose”.

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

This town, maybe America as a whole, is in serious need of some sidewalk etiquette training.

Let me set the scene. You’re walking down a sidewalk, not a very busy one in fact. The only people involved are you and the group of 2-4 people coming your way. You, being courteous and mindful of other peoples’ space, are walking on the right side of the sidewalk, much like you drive on the right side of the road. You clearly see the other people coming and want to make it easy for them to pass by you. Sound good so far?

Here’s where the problem is. The other people seem to think that either:

a) They own the sidewalk and can do as they please.
b) Their conversation about how Dave didn’t call Jenny back last night is more important than making room for you to pass.
c) You have your invisible cloak on and they have no idea that you’re coming the other way.
d) They’re just rude and deserve to be that way, so deal with it.

Oh no you didn’t! Listen up people. You had better hope that, male or female, you wore your shirt with extra shoulder padding in it because my shoulder is pretty tough and it’s going to introduce itself to yours. And if that does happen, don’t give me a look of disgust. Instead stop and think about what just transpired. There are other people living in this world of yours and you have to respect their personal space! If you can’t grasp this concept, feel free to move to NYC or start bulking those shoulders up.

Ahhhh. I feel much better.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

photo courtesy of Gisela Giardino

If you’re reading this when you should be doing maintenance on a server then perhaps you’re eligible for some free stuff. The EtCetera jobs in craigslist had this entry looking for server/system administrators at organizations with 1,000 or more people.

This is an observational research study involving a brief visit to your workplace. The visit will take approximately 1 hour and is designed to be as non-intrusive as possible. Each participant will receive their choice of a retail Microsoft software title from a list of our most popular titles. See the end of this post for a examples of available titles.

Some expensive stuff, too. Visual Studio .NET, Office Pro, etc. Worth a look if you qualify and can spare the hour.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I just harvested some bamboo from a yard in Falls Church. Yes, the lady who owns the house said I could take it and I don’t have any new trespassing warrants against me as far as I know.

This stuff, as lovely as it is, is a plague upon our landscape here in the DC area. And barring the use of our welfare panda population, there are few ways to really get rid of it. However, with some creative thought, we can at least have something productive come of the infestation.

My use for it? Tomato stakes. I figure I have about two weeks before my tomato plants are too big to support themselves, so I am hoping for some good hot, dry weather between now and then to dry out the stakes I cut.

If the stakes are still green when it comes time to stick them in the ground, they will sprout and grow like the weeds they are and I won’t get my security deposit back unless I get a panda or two in here to deforest the yard.

What are your creative uses for our overgrown bamboo?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I thought Bumblebee was a Camaro, though, not a 95 Mustang convertible. Note the matching steering wheel cover.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

When my wife told me that the DC Madam finally had her records emancipated from the courts and can now release them to the media, the first thought that came to mind was “I can has scandal nao?”

Yes, it being Friday, and my brain still being pickled from Three Philosophers drunk on Independence day, I went straight for the lolcats reference. Besides, can’t you picture this whole sordid affair told by barely literate cats with bad spelling? I mean, it makes the whole thing way funnier.

C’mon, you know this would be way funnier as a lolmeme.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Thanks to whoever left this artful square and smear of melted chocolate and puffed rice on the bulkhead by the system map on a Blue Line train car. It really made my day when I almost leaned right on it without looking before my wife grabbed me. Can we try for a Glenfiddich chocolate liquor cup next time? That would hit the spot.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Whether or not you were among the Independence Day masses panicking and running calmly evacuating in an orderly fashion to shelter during yesterday’s thunderstorm warning and tornado watch, you might be interested to see NOAA’s history of tornadoes in the District.

Northwest and the Downtown and National Mall core have had a fair share of tornado hits, including one in 1814 which killed several British soldiers around the time of The Burning of Washington. An F2 in 1888 touched down in Southwest and went up Maryland Ave, damaging the National Museum (today’s dormant Arts and Industries Building) and the old Botanical Gardens, before the funnel lifted up just short of Capitoll Hill.

Read about more historic DC tornadoes here. (Also, I seem to recall a really bad disaster TV movie a couple of years ago which featured anomalous weather causing a tornado which destroyed the White House. But the name escapes me. It wasn’t The Day After Tomorrow. It was worse.)

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Odds are if you’re a daily commuter on this route you know it already, but if you’re just an occasional driver, be warned: the Frederick Douglass Bridge (which I have always just thought of as South Cap Bridge) is about to be closed for several months as the raised roadway goes the way of the dodo. The wikipedia folk are inclined to some speculation that this is about visual rejuvenation but I think it’s a much more straightforward effort to get people in and make them more likely to stop in the area and spend some money in the Potomac Ave aread, rather than heading straight on to the Mall area.

There’s some good pictures of the transition over here at JDLand. It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts commuters coming in from SE who aren’t looking to stop in the area – how much will this slow down movement? I have the luxury of calling it “interesting” since I don’t have to make the trip myself. Those of you who do, I hope the 11th street bridge doesn’t make your day too much worse…

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Rejected…

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

Imagine my shock and horror this morning to pull into my local gas station, running on fumes, and run into this sticker. Apparently, every pump in the station was given a failing rating from the Virginia Department of Agriculture for one reason or another. Perhaps it’s related to the crackdown on gas storage temperatures that’s going on in the greater DC area? Who knows.

I filled up, but because I had to, but I certainly wondered what my station had done to so badly tick off the state.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

FAIL. What the heck kind of message is that? That’s the message I have been given by my parents since I was a kid and exactly what they have expected from me. But that’s not important. This isn’t therapy, after all, but thanks for thinking of my self esteem anyway.

Okay, Arlington Parking folks – let’s get this straight right now. “Fail” is more of a command than a stated condition. It should say FAILED. I understand there are not enough spots on that little display to insert six letters but perhaps you can figure out how to squeeze in a fifth character there and spell BROKE.

After all, to most people in the area, “broke” is the past tense of break. To me and my people, “broke” is an adjective. We have both yankees and southerners here, so this word will work fine with both populations. I might even say damned yankees if I were just a few miles away, in Fairfax County, but yankees rarely seem to catch that reference and it falls completely flat here in Arlington.

Best of all – BROKE won’t drive any of us broke with increased trips to the therapist, the way a command to under perform will. And those therapists are mostly damned yankees anyway.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

We didn’t quite make it to our desired viewing point for fireworks tonight. Owing to a wait for word on whether the weather would clear up, we left home a bit late and were halfway between Farragut North and Constitution Gardens when the first blossoms colored the night sky above. At that point we were just in front of the Red Cross Building, and we found the view from the steps in front was just fine, without having to deal with crowds or security checkpoints. Even with people standing in front of us the angle was such that the fireworks were well over their heads.

Just one problem: fallout. The wind was blowing from the blast zone, so as the show went on, bits of ash and burnt paper started to fall around us, sometimes still smoldering. The smoke smell was fairly strong, too, though nothing too overpowering.

More fireworks photos here.

We opted to avoid Metro and just walk home. The crowd was a formidable crush of people around the Washington Monument, but it thinned block by block, till soon it was no more crowded than an average summer weekday. I’d love to know what Metro was like tonight after the fireworks, though. Anyone got horror stories or photos of the mob?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs