Sangria

Originally uploaded by rabataller.

It came as rather a surprise to the Alexandria location of La Tasca when they were cited last year for serving… sangria. Virginia outlawed the serving of beverages that mix beer or wine with spirits 75 years ago, and upon being informed of the La Tasca citation, Jaleo changed its sangria recipe as well for their Virginia location.

Always with thorough coverage of all things alcohol-related, the City Paper has more details on the particular obscurity of Virginia’s ABC laws.

The most amusing detail in all of this, though, is not that a bunch of old fogeys decided to clamp down on liquor sales right after the repeal of Prohibition, but that the bill introduced by state Representative Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) would introduce an exemption for sangria only, rather than repealing the ban completely. So maybe you’ll get your sangria, but your Kir Royale is totally out of the question.

Who knew I was practicing civil disobedience with all that sangria I made this summer?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I don’t know about you, but I get nervous as hell when traversing grates like this. What’s strange, though, is that my fear has nothing to do with dying. I figure that if I fall 25 feet and am impaled on a piece of pipe or maybe fall even farther and have my femurs splinter and lodge in my skull, that’s okay. I don’t fear the prospect of the afterlife, whatever form it takes.

What I really fear about grates is the idea that I might drop my keys or cell phone and lose them forever. How would I get home? How could I call for someone to help me retrieve my phone if it were lost 50 feet down?

Do you get nervous when walking on grates like this? What are your fears? Please share with the group.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

the booby dance

Originally uploaded by matt duke.

Mayor Fenty announced this afternoon that the District Government fired 9 people today for extensive porn viewing at the workplace. But, that’s not the fun part. The fun part is this: “Each of the nine employees clicked on porn sites more than 19,000 times last year, according to the results of an internal investigation of 10,000 government computers, officials said. Three visited such sites more than 39,000 times apiece last year, the investigation found.”

Good fucking God, people. That’s a LOT of porn. The top offender was over 50,000 times in a year.

Something’s wrong here. 50,000 times in 250 day year is 200 times a day. Or, about once every two minutes for an eight hour work day. This can’t be pageviews. This has to be something on the order of the difference between hits and pageviews when it comes to measuring web statistics. At a bare minimum. Otherwise, that’s just insane.

Anyhow, they’re filtering the internet in DC offices now, so you don’t have to worry about needing to hose the desks down with Lysol. Well. Maybe you should anyway. Because they still kept a bunch of people who had less than 10,000 viewings in a year. Which is still 40 times in a working day.

I’ve never been so skeeved out than when I heard one of my old coworkers tell the story about the VP who liked gay porn on in the background while he worked in a shared office. Seriously. Keep it at home.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The Eagle View Elementary staff listing

A commenter in the WaPo story pointed out that Candy Tistadt is listed as a Fairfax County School Systems employee! So as if it wasn’t bad enough that she, as a spouse, picked up the phone and castigated a student who left a (by all accounts) polite message at their home – she is an employee and therefor a representative of FCPS!

Wonder if her husband will do the right thing and fire her? I can only imagine what a delight she is in the office.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

If, like me, you read the article Tom mentioned and though “but where’s the audio?!” well, here you go. Because I don’t want you to have to spend the sixty seconds on Google that I did.

Seriously, what’s wrong with this woman? You call a teenager to castigate them for leaving a phone message, and you behave worse in your message than he did in his?

UPDATE: Gone from YouTube but still over here being used *snort* to shill a voice to mp3 service.

Just in case they take it down, here’s the transcript from the above page.

“This is Candy Tistadt, Dean Tistadt’s wife. This message is for Dave Kori. How dare you call us at home?! If you’ve got a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it. My husband was up at 4 o’clock this morning, trying to decide the best thing to do, to send you to school, on a day when the weather man is calling for one thing and another thing happens. You don’t begin to know what you are talking about, and don’t you ever call here again! My husband has been at the office since 6:30 this morning, so don’t you even suggest that he purposely didn’t answer his phone. He is out almost every single night of the week at meetings for snotty-nosed little brats, and he may not have called you but it is not because he’s home because it snowed. Get over it kid, and go to school. Get an education, that’s what you’re there for.”

UPDATE 2: Here’s another audio recording.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Virginia House Repeals Driver Fees

The Virginia House of Delegates voted 95-2 yesterday to repeal Virginia’s Bad Driver Fees. Smart, boys, smart. Get on it, Virginia Senate!

Supreme Court to Hear Gun Ban Oral Arguments on 18 March

Mark your calendars, in about 8 weeks, the Supreme Court will hear the Oral Arguments in D.C. vs. Heller. It’ll be good to hear Nina Totenberg’s dulcet tones tell us exactly what happens during this particular case.

Students Get in Fight on Metro, Put it on YouTube

Gotta love it when breaking news like this happens on YouTube. How dumb do you really have to be to post a video of your friends beating up a kid on the Metro and not expect to get caught? Really?

Angry Phone Call Takes on New Life

Yeah, this one’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s worth a look. A local student called an administrator at home and asked why school hadn’t been cancelled due to inclement weather. The administrator’s wife responded. It wasn’t pretty. Then the response got posted to the web. Then it got really, really ugly.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Check out what local Internet video revolutionary Jonny Goldstein has in store for us this week:

This week, we’re proud to Par-tay with whygosolo.com and thedcconcierge.com.

whygosolo.com is an area startup which helps people “use the web to enable the finding of exciting and new things and people but, get OFF the web and go enjoy them.”

Our second guest is The DC Concierge, who runs thedcconierge.com, “a guide to Washington, DC, after the name badge comes off… You ask. I answer.”

What: Jonny’s Par-tay, the live interactive web video talk show
Who: Jonny Goldstein, Scott Stead, with Featured Guests Ann Bernard, CEO of whygosolo.com, and The DC Concierge.
How to watch: Just go to jonnygoldstein.com.
Interactivity: Interact via the live chatroom and if you have a webcam and a blogtv.com account, we can even put you on via video.
When: 9PM EST, Weds, Jan 23

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

This started with me looking for pictures of Dupont Circle rats on Flickr. You know how the web is. One thing leads to another and before long you are reading about John McCain giving a five-year-old a cigarette while a student at Episcopal High School in Alexandria.

At first I just chuckled but read on. The brief article is about the author’s father, who was McCain’s football coach and a very good role model during his formative years, even if they were mostly spent sneaking into the Gayety Burlesque Theatre in DC. Read a little snippet here and then go read the entire piece. It’s certainly a great tribute to a great man.

My own memories of John McCain are limited mostly to the occasions when he’d be assigned to our house to work off demerits–raking leaves, mowing our backyard, etc. One day I was innocently wandering around the campus and stopped to talk to some of the students at “Egypt”, the school’s designated outdoor student smoking area on the south wall of Stewart Gym, the school’s wrestling gymnasium. McCain was there with Rives Richie, another student and frequent guest at our house. The evil McCain asked me if I wanted to smoke a cigarette and handed me his. I took a puff, inhaling, choked on it and ran home. I could hear McCain laughing.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Best varmint hunter ever

My next door neighbour, Joe Martin, was up early last week and noticed Petworth’s newest resident; an urban coyote:

If you were up early this morning as I was, you would have had the opportunity to see a coyote walking down Varnum Street NW towards Grant Circle…

The coyote was gallantly walking in the middle of the street, coming down from the 300 block, heading west after crossing 4th Street NW. It stopped by the side of a home across Varnum, probably looking for their Christmas decorations.

Now before you go thinking he saw a fox or a mangy dog, let Joe set you straight:

Absolutely not a fox. My windows were within 30 feet of the coyote, well lit on my street. After it crossed into Grant Circle, I went to my computer and looked at photos of coyote to verify what I saw. The ears stood up, busy, full tail. I had no doubts whatsoever. I also looked at the animal with binoculars.

Personally, I say “welcome” to this Wile E. Coyote and wonder what wild animals you’ve seen in our fair city.

Oh and deer don’t count – they’re everywhere.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Today on the roads is going to be a lot of fun. There are rolling street closures downtown near the March for Life, oh and by the way, wintry mix will start late this morning and continue as sleet and rain this afternoon. Don’t drive today unless you have to.

Maryland Commutes Awful Today

If you were using either Wisconsin Avenue to the Northwest or Annapolis Road to come into the city, you know just how bad it is out there. Between the fire still smoldering at the tire shop in northeast yesterday, and this morning’s fire at JP’s Night Club on Wisconsin Ave, it was pretty rough to transit through those areas. Get ready for cranky coworkers.

Stadium $40+M Over Budget

The costs associated with purchasing the land needed for the new Nationals Park has pushed the stadium $43M over budget. The District’s CFO Natwar Gandhi relied on a study by consulting firm Deloitte that insisted the land would cost no more than $77M. Then it was $98M. Now it seems to have been $127M. Gotta love it when the consultants you paid all that money still get to pocket it despite their obvious fuckup. Well done, DC.

Maryland Phonebook Misprint Leads to Sex Line

There’s a lot to laugh at here. Whether it’s the concept of physical paper-based phonebooks, the continued existence of phone sex lines, or the guy who decided to look up the governor’s office line in his phonebook, I’m not sure, but this is stupid good fun. I mean, I know we get screwed by the government all the time, but, who knew they’d give you a reacharound?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

After we hit Rocklands on Saturday night with our friends, it was back to their place for a watching of The Godfather on A&E. Our friend Steph had never seen it, and it was well past time that she did. We sat through all the commercials, but learned some valuable things. Jon was quick to point out that he’d seen messages from his TiVo that indicated he’d gotten a bunch of new channels added to his lineup by Comcast. Indeed, there they were: Sci-Fi HD (mmm, BSG in HD!), Food Network (mmmm, Giada in HD!) and USA HD and TBS HD (mmmm more Jack McCoy in HD!) and a few other channels! How exciting!

When I headed home, we fired up the TiVo HD that I jumped through so many hoops to get showed all of the brand new channels! Hooray! Unfortunately, nothing but grey screen. I confirmed this with Jon, and sure enough, he was in grey screen land as well. My friend Jeff didn’t even see them in his lineup, but got “Channel Not Available” messages when he tuned to them with his Comcast DVR.

Oddly, though, they’re part of Comcast’s Programming Lineup page, and yet, they’re dark for all subscribers in the region. (Feel free to use either Arlington’s 22201 or a DC zip code to check if you have to.) When I talked to a technician this afternoon, he said they had yet to launch, but gave no indication as to why they were in the system. When Jeff talked to a technician this afternoon, he said they weren’t supposed to be in any lineup published anywhere. And yet, there they are.

When I reached out to Comcast’s Press Office, I was told by Lisa Altman that Comcast would launch the new networks “sometime in the first quarter of 2008.” Odd. Seems like they’re advertising a service that they’re not delivering. Generally, that’s frowned upon by various federal regulators when it comes to a service like cable television. I’ve put the new HD Lineup in the Extended Entry, copied directly from the Comcast website. What are you seeing on your cable box?

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

Hello! I’m being given a trial run by the Powers Who Control Metroblogging, so forgive me if I get all geekified. I figured I’d just jump right on in here…

So a few weeks after the flap about W. Richard West, Jr’s self-commissioned portrait and possible inappropriate spending – which followed on last year’s major stories of poor spending habits of other SI executives – the Smithsonian finally did something right.

Enter Stephen Colbert’s portrait hanging at the National Portrait Gallery. Now, SI officials won’t come out and say it, but I’ll bet this “going along with the joke” is more a PR ploy to help boost the Institution’s sagging image than anything else.

And hey, I agree! At least it shows there are a lot more smart-thinking people over there than ones out to misappropriate money.

Best of all? I love the location. It’s a limited “six-week showing in what the museum considers an ‘appropriate place’ – right between the bathrooms near the ‘America’s Presidents’ exhibit.”

Sheer awesomeness.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

If you frequent those crazy bastards who drive cabs in this town, you might want to check out the Post’s new Fare calculator. It’s a fully featured little Google Maps Application complete with the old taxi cab zones, as well as the new fares, plus traffic estimates and a full list of extras.

This fare was cheaper with the meter, but I tried a few others that would’ve been far more lucrative for the cabbies. I suspect that it’ll be a wash, overall. But, we won’t know for sure until after the new fares take effect. Of course, if the cabbies strike like they’re saying, it’s not real clear if that’ll give us good data to go on.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Barbeque. It’s a controversial subject in these parts, and you need to look no further than Wikipedia’s entry on regional barbeque to see all manner of subtle protest of one state’s traditions over another. Some people prefer St. Louis-style ribs with a heavy tomato-based sauce. Others prefer North Carolina-style ribs with a good solid dry rub followed by thin vinegar-based sauce. Which one you choose specifies the kind of personal preference usually reserved for Religion, Politics or Sports Teams. It’s not a small deal.

When my friend Jonathan told me about the Rocklands re-opening on Lee Hwy in Virginia Square, I couldn’t have been more excited. For a long time, Rocklands shared a space with the pool-bar Carpool right off the Metro. But, apparently, the management agree expired in 2005, and since then Arlington has been left largely rib-less. Sure, tons of places served the dish, but none really gave it the deep and abiding respect and love that good ribs deserve. Four of us went over that way last night, the new location is next to the Georgetown Valet (and the Ron Paul Revolution World Headquarters) where Pica Deli used to be.

When you open the door, the sweet, tangy smell of barbeque wafts gentle out into the outside, followed by the hickory smoke that makes their food so good. Rocklands is an order-then-sit type of restaurant, with both family-style and individual-sized meals. Tiff and I had sandwiches (Lamb, Brisket) and some of their spicy onion rings, while our friends had a full slab of smoked ribs. As we ordered, they were moving full-sized briskets and pork shoulder from the smoker to the carving platform, and they were huge cuts of meat, steaming from the heat, and smelling like heaven to any barbeque lover.

Rocklands will be a favorite of ours, I’m sure. Welcome back, guys, we missed you.

Rocklands
3471 Washington Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 528-9663

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Little girl in a park with Union Station
in the background, Washington, D.C. (LOC)

Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress has been hard at work putting thousands of images from its collection online…and hosting them at Flickr. Lots of cool stuff in here. Seems like the kind of thing I could get lost in for a couple of hours- I love old photos. Check it out when you’ve got some time to kill.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Well, I’m working from home due to the bomb scare at the World Bank today. However, it may have been a good day for everybody to stay home. It’s been reported via WUSA, that a well-armed nut job made his way on to the capitol grounds armed with a tactical vest (probably bullet-proof and loaded with shells and rounds), a compound bow and arrow (or possibly a crossbow) and a rear mounted samurai sword (ala “Blade”).

Really folks… is 2008 that bad already? Let’s breathe and try not to do anything even dumber today, even if you want a long weekend.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Well, I showed you the visitor to our birdfeeder. However along the way we had a bit of an adventure with some other critters that like birdseed. Or, really, damned near anything.

When my mother sent us the birdfeeder she included $10 with the explanation that it wasn’t practical to ship birdseed. Fair enough. So my darling girlfriend went out, looked at the options, and opted for pure sunflower seeds. As it turns out that’s about what the goddess of homemaking suggests as well. Once we got it home, however, we realized our initial intended place wasn’t going to be able to support the feeder and I’d have to come up with some other way to mount it. So we put the seed on the porch out of the way and I put another item on my shopping list for when I next went to Mecca Home Depot.

A few weeks later someone else found the bag of seed and decided they’d like to do some preliminary testing to make sure it’s okay for the birds. Now, normally I’m okay with feeding the little tree rats – I think they’re cute. But its not what we bought this seed for and they were having their version of a kegger on our patio, crapping and peeing all over our bench there behind the feed. I don’t even like having to clean my own bathroom, I’m sure not going to do it for the Alpha Kappa Sciuridaes

So I went out and got a storage box for the feed when I picked up the crook, which I’d wanted to get anyway. I knew it wouldn’t keep them out long-term but I wanted to see how long it took them to wriggle it open. As it turns out it didn’t even slow them down long enough for me to get out of bed – I took this when I came downstairs the following morning. So I piled some firewood on top of the box and went about my day. By afternoon they’d somehow shoved the wood off and gotten right back in.

So I moved the box to the other side of the patio, pushed it into the corner, put a big spool of coax I had out there on top of it and braced the roll on the other side.

This bought me a day, apparently until the squirrel army could muster up their little ropes, block and tackle. I came downstairs to discover this fellow nibbling away and the spool off to the side. Note the lack of one of the lid flaps – they managed somehow to get it completely off the container. I considered a padlock but I feel confident they’ve all read and mastered the MIT lockpicking guide.

The container is in the house now. I give it a week before they muster up the troops to stage a full invasion. Here’s hoping they don’t have body armor.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

image courtesy of Alan Light

The always excellent Capital Weather gang has a neat post up about what causes big flakes. I might have made the connection if I’d ever thought about it, but they spell it out: as neat looking as they are, large snowflakes are actually a bad sign if you’re a snow lover. They’re caused by above-freezing temps as the flakes fall, causing them to clump along the way.

Thus all the huge snowflakes yesterday, therefor the tremendous slush-fest it resulted in.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I’m gonna violate the rules of basic suspense and just show you the end result here. The road that got us here I’ll post a little later – it’s more involved.

This is one of the Christmas gifts my darling girlfriend and I got this year. We’ve really enjoyed all the wildlife that’s showed up in our backyard so my parents got us a bird feeder. It’s an interesting contraption – the inside casing that holds the birdseed is spring-loaded so that any significant weight on the outer casing – like, say, an eastern gray squirrel – closes the feed openings.

As it’s turned out that hasn’t been much of an issue. The tree we’d originally thought to put it on isn’t strong enough to hold it so I got a shepherd’s crook to hang it from. Hopefully I’ll manage to get some video of the squirrels trying to get up it – they can’t quite hang on well enough with just one hand, so when they reach out to the feeder they start to slide down it, a la a firefighter on a pole. It’s quite amusing, but it’s a full-motion gag.

Here’s the only neognathe visitor we’ve gotten (that we’ve seen) so far, which our park ranger friend identifies as a house finch.

Native only in the western states, it was introduced in the east about 40 years ago (some records say a pet store owner set some free). They are common around urban areas and a frequent visitor to bird feeders. The eastern house finches have been suffering from a somewhat mysterious eye disease lately – and people with bird feeders should help prevent the spread of the disease by keeping feeders clean, keeping seed fresh and not allowing it to get moldy, and keeping the area around the bird feeders clean too.

If you can’t tell, we’re really getting into this. Sorry the picture isn’t better – I didn’t have an angle where I wasn’t shooting through window screen.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s like a snow hangover here. I’m just not moving at full-speed today for whatever reason. More snow tomorrow, probably, and cold on Sunday. Get ready to deal.

If You Left Your 2 Year Old at Deanwood Metro Last Night…

…the Police would like a word with you. In addition, you might want to get that Parent of the Year application out. Dude. It was cold and crappy last night and you left your kid at the Metro. Seriously, WTF?

Dominion Starting Conservation Programs

Glad to see they’re setting their sights so high over at Dominion, they’re working to decrease power consumption by 10% over 14 years. It’s nice to see them try, though. Maybe that money might be better spent on a switchgrass reactor, guys?

Some Asshat With a Telephone Closed the World Bank

Yeah, I’m cranky this morning, but I just can’t abide a stupid bomb threat via telephone. Skinning is far too good for these guys.

Of Course the Parents Don’t Want You To Close Their Schools

Being at last night’s hearings must have been like passing a kidney stone without the benefits of modern pharmacy, I suspect. It sounds like they were an awful lot of fun. Between splitting the meeting across 23 sites (whose bright idea was that?!), the weather and the boycott likely depressed attendance. So, everyone’s feeling disenfranchised for reasons I’m sure we can all see. Corruption and Ineptitude. Alive and Well and Living in the Wilson Building…?

Maryland (eventually) Going to New Voting Machines

Gov. O’Malley has decided that Maryland will return to paper balloting in 2010 when machines will be available. Why exactly they’d spend $7M today on what’s not available for a good two years, I’m not exactly sure. But, as someone who feels that touchscreen voting is a disaster waiting to happen (not because of what some jackass in Ohio said, but because of the electronic recount measures. Put your tinfoil back on and go home.) I think this is probably the right decision. Shame they can’t get it done before the General Election in November.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs