‘Spread Your Wings and Fly’ by Downing87
Welcome back to the workweek. Sorry the weekend can’t be longer, but hey, I guess you’ll just have to look forward to the next holiday. Continue reading
By Michael R
Yearly Archives: 2011
By Michael R
By National Memorial Day Concert: Behind the Scenes
Photo by Rachel Levitin
Each year, PBS presents the National Memorial Day Concert live from the National Mall. The show features some of the top musical acts in the nation and around the world. This year’s show had special meaning to the production crew, performers, veterans, active soldiers, and all Americans due to the recent capture of Osama Bin Laden.
The 2011 program shown on Sunday evening commemorated the tenth anniversary of September 11. The show was also a “thank you” to our troops who have been serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as their families in addition to being a tribute to our World War II veterans on the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
A few of the musical acts including American Idol winner Kris Allen, word renowned classical vocalist Hayley Westenra and Grammy award winner Yolanda Adams took a few moments to speak with We Love DC in between their rehearsal sets the day before the live show. The west lawn of the Capitol played the perfect backdrop to an event unique to the District and the performers involved were more than grateful for being an active part of this live tribute to our Armed Forces. Continue reading
Nats Drop One-Run Game to Philly on Memorial Day
‘Lofty View’
courtesy of ‘MudflapDC’
The Nationals failed to secure a victory against Roy Halladay and the Philadelphia Phillies on Memorial Day despite a ten-hit game. Monday’s 5-4 loss is Washington’s third straight one-run loss during this homestand.
“It’s a loss. If we got six hits, it’s a loss. If we get fourteen, it’s the loss. Losses hurt and we completed very well,” manager Jim Riggleman said after the game.
“There’s no moral victories but you hope it seeps into people that we can do this. We can hit. We know we can hit. [There’s] a history of hitting and we’re going to hit.” Continue reading
By Don
Happy Memorial Day
Salute
Originally uploaded by pablo.raw
We here at We Love DC wish you and yours a happy and safe Memorial Day. If you are in harm’s way in service to the country, we thank you.
To those who paid the highest price, we remember and honor you. No matter the year or details of your passing, in peacetime or conflict, you were one of ours and had devoted yourself to the country in a way most of us never have and will never need to – because you did.
We Shall Keep the Faith
by Moina Michael, November 1918
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
By Dan Rowinski
Padres Small Ball Better Than Nats, Take Rubber Match 5-4
‘Washington Nationals’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’
A scrappy game was played between two scrappy teams at Nats Ball Park on Sunday afternoon with the Padres proving to be the scrappiest of the bunch on the weekend, taking the rubber match 5-4 and the weekend series two games to one.
The Nats and the Padres are two teams that cannot hit. That became painfully apparent in the first two games of the series this weekend, with teams trading 2-1 wins on Friday and Saturday. Sunday degenerated in to a “get it done any way humanely possible” type of affair featuring bunts, sacrifices and small ball tactics to make any baseball statistician cringe.
The epitome came in the top of the ninth. Jorge Cantu pinch hit for the Padres’ pitcher slot and scraped a double down the right field line. He was brought home two batters later by an single from Ryan Ludwick that barely made it out of the infield, off the glove of shortstop Ian Desmond who whirled a throw to home that was a second too late.
By Don
Jefferson Memorial Dance Arrests Poorly Handled
Poorly handled by the demonstrators, that is.
The above video splices together several perspectives on yesterday’s arrests at the Jefferson Memorial of Adam Kokesh and others who were there to demonstrate against restrictions on personal expression at the memorial site.
The BoingBoing crowd is making a lot of the way Kokesh is brought to the ground, which is a highly unfortunate distraction from the more important issue of “free speech zones” in modern America. You can skip forward into the video to about the 2:20 mark and see the two more physical arrests. The first is of an unidentified individual; the arrest starts out with little physicality until another individual runs in and attempts to pull the first man away from the officer. Both are taken down to the ground and restrained.
The third arrest is of Kokesh and starts around 3:00. Viewing from there and listening to the audio it’s clear that the officer first attempts to tell Kokesh to submit to arrest without touching him, then endeavors to turn him around and detain him. Kokesh ignores the requests, continues to walk away, then refuses to kneel. It’s at that point that the officer lifts him and throws him to the ground to restrain and arrest him.
The selectively edited highlight reel – James O’Keefe would be proud – doesn’t show the first man interfering with the other man’s arrest nor do you see the officer attempt to arrest Kokesh without violence. It’s hard to tell to what extent anyone is resisting against the officers once they’re prone; while they don’t get any limbs free it’s clear they were physically resisting before that point. They could be straining against the hold the officers have on they – it’s impossible to tell from the video.
I’m personally a big supporter of civil disobedience against unjust laws and I was all the way behind Kokesh and the others… till the second the officers attempted to arrest them. The law against peaceful non-disruptive demonstration is baloney, but it’s the current law of the land. Getting charged with it and fighting it – although this is pretty pointless since there’s already a case in play that may be further appealed above the circuit court level – is great, but resisting that arrest is not.
Changing the law and changing public opinion via non-violent demonstration and challenging the constitutionality of an arrest is fine, but the additional escalation in this circumstance is entirely on Kokesh and the other demonstrators. They had the opportunity to get arrested for that they believe in and show the world the status quo – the arrest of the couple gently swaying, for example, is a perfect demonstration of how silly this restriction is. Forcing the encounter to be violent by resisting arrest cheapens the whole thing and distracts from what should have been the core issue.
Kokesh and the others could have chosen to go limp and non-violently resist the arrest. Instead they made this mess. Too bad.
Memorializing Endless War in DC: Is it Possible?
‘leaving the Senate’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’
There was a piece in the Outlook section of Sunday’s Washington Post entitled “How we memorialize endless war?” by public-monument scholar Kirk Savage. It’s an interesting read that sparks a legitimate question on this Memorial Day weekend.
In the wake of the U.S. Armed Forces catching Osama Bin Laden after a near ten year search, the American war on terror isn’t over. Our troops are still overseas and many more never made it home. And, a good amount of the men and women who did make it home are wounded soldiers in some capacity, be it mentally, emotionally or physically.
Savage’s article begs the question: “Will Washington ever memorialize the fights these men and women fought if there is no set end date to the on-going nature of the fight against terror?” Continue reading
‘Adams Morgan: The Movie’ Actor Has ‘Fight Club’ Parody Go Viral
Photo Courtesy of Noah Baron
In early 2010, We Love DC sat down to talk to DC-based actor Noah Baron about his role in the independent, local film Adams Morgan: The Movie. Since then, Baron’s moved from the District out west to Los Angeles in pursuit of furthering his acting career.
Recently, though, Baron was part of an independent film project that has since gone viral. Cuddle Club, a shot-for-shot parody of the original Fight Club trailer was released on YouTube earlier this week. Baron and his colleague Ross Willett wrote and produced the parody themselves. In less than 48 hours, the video’s spread across the internet to sites like Funny or Die, Tosh.o and The Film Crusade (just to name a few). This morning, the video was listed on TV Guide’s website as being the “Most Buzzed” internet clip.
The short of it is — this is a hilarious clip. It’s well scripted, the acting’s timely, and the parody is worth the two minute thirty four second run time. The video is available after the page break.
By Dan Rowinski
Zimmermann Hard-Luck Loser As Nats Bats Silenced By Friars
Photo by Dan Rowinski
If you set up a script for how to win a baseball game, it would go something like this:
Get good starting pitching that gives you at least six innings and allows less than three runs. Make good defensive plays that keep the other team off the board and line up three quality relievers to shut the other team out at the end of the game.
Oh, and score enough runs to make it all stand up.
The Nats got three out of the four pieces of the equation on Saturday against the Padres. Jordan Zimmermann was solid through six innings, allowing two runs on five hits with a walk and four strikeouts. He threw 100 pitchers to 24 batters and left the game down 2-0. For fielding, Rick Ankiel made two great plays in centerfield to finish both the first and second innings. Jerry Hairston made a great diving stab-and-throw in the third. Zimmermann picked off would-be base runner Eric Patterson (who had just stole second) to end that inning.
By Tom Bridge
Reminder: Orange and Blue lines have four closed stations
Metro is hard at work this holiday weekend to conduct some serious repairs on the Orange and Blue lines. They’re replacing almost 5,000 track fasteners, adding 5 miles of communications cable for cell phone access, repairing 21 escalators and 8 elevators, and replacing four track switches as part of the work.
Capitol South, Eastern Market, Potomac Ave and Stadium-Armory are closed all weekend while the work gets done. Metro’s running shuttle buses through the area, so if you need to get to those areas covered by those stations, you can still get there, but plan for a lot of extra time to do it.
Michael Morse is Mr. Walk-Off for a Night
‘6TH’
courtesy of ‘MissChatter’
Friday night’s Nationals game versus the San Diego Padres can best be summed up by the father-daughter duo I encountered on the Metro last night after all was said and done: “It was perfectly awesome.”
Without a strong heart of the order and Ryan Zimmerman out of the lineup, the Nats have struggled to get their offense cooking this season. They snapped a 1-7 losing skid in grand fashion Friday at the Navy Yard, though, in a 2-1 victory thanks to a lead-off, first pitch, walk-off homerun from Michael Morse. Continue reading
By Brittany
Friday Happy Hour: Granita Cocktails at Casa Nonna
Wednesday started out pretty poorly for me. One of my favorite people celebrated his birthday on Tuesday night (his “actual” birthday, following the “pre-birthday” celebrations at U Hall on Saturday, mind you) and things got a bit saturated. I woke up the next morning feeling pretty sick. After some coffee and water, I got around to checking my email – only to be reminded that I was scheduled to meet up with some other press people to attend a cocktail tasting at Casa Nonna that evening.
I considered canceling, but let’s face facts: A drinks writer calling in hungover is not just unprofessional, it is downright amateurish. When six rolled around, I got myself together and headed over to Dupont Circle.
Casa Nonna is on Connecticut Avenue at N St, in the former California Pizza Kitchen space on the corner. A long, attractive patio stretches along the one side and the place seems absolutely perfect for the drinks-after-work set though, on this evening at least, the place is comfortably populated but definitely not crowded. As the summer evenings drag on, though, one expects that to change. To sweeten the deal: a trio of special “granitia cocktails” that bring together icy, fruity, and boozy to appealing result.
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By DC Social Innovation Launch Party
courtesy of ‘Official U.S. Navy Imagery’
Two years ago Congress enacted the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and created the Social Innovation Fund. The fund aims to improve the lives of people in low-income communities by mobilizing public and private resources to grow promising, innovative community-based solutions that have evidence of compelling impact in three areas of priority need: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development.
However, although the Act may have been signed in to law in Washington, DC, its national focus has left room for improvement in the District itself. The DC Social Innovation Project (DCSIP) hopes to bridge this gap.
Co-founded by former Akin Gump attorney Darius Graham and attorney Omar Hashmi, DCSIP fosters social innovation through two different initiatives. The first, the Community Lab, grants program provides $1,500 grants to neighborhood associations, community groups, and schools in DC to implement a small scale, high-impact community project. The second, the Bright Idea Challenge, enlists 18-35 year olds in the DC area to propose creative social ventures that address a local issue, with the two best ideas receiving up to $10,000 in funding and other pro bono services to help them launch their venture.
By We Love Food: Where to Eat Memorial Weekend
‘happy for the flag’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’
A human being can only eat so many hot dogs and hamburgers around the grill with family and friends. So here’s a helpful roundup of some food events that will get you out the door and give you something to do other than wondering if the steaks are done with Uncle Barry manning the grill.
By Tom Bridge
Homestand Preview: Padres and Phillies
‘Bright and Ballsy’
courtesy of ‘Kevin H.’
There are few things that say summertime quite like baseball. With the long weekend coming, the Nationals (21-28) return home for a six-game homestand against the Padres (20-30) and Phillies (31-19). The road trip wasn’t as kind to the Nationals as the previous one, with the Nationals going 1-7 across three cities, and playing some pretty dismal baseball. It’s clear that the Nationals are in for some interesting times. But, there’s some good reasons to hit the ballpark this time round.
Food Truck Tracker
‘Sabora Street’
courtesy of ‘yostinator’
Kick off the long weekend with lunch from a truck. Happy Memorial Day; be safe and have fun!
Continue reading
By Tricia Barba
This Week in Food
‘bangers & mash @ againn, DC’
courtesy of ‘Plantains and Kimchi’
Oh, establishments
Can’t argue with an institution, right? This week Esquire released The Best Bars in America 2011 list which includes favorite newcommers and old staples. Two Capitol Hill DC Bars made it on the list: Tune Inn and Hawk ‘n’ Dove. Can you guess which category they were in? The Feast caught upwith Tune Inn owner Lisa Nardelli on making the list. Congrats!
Lobster everywhere
Luke’s Lobster opened up yesterday and yes those lobster rolls are good. I was almost convinced to go with the shrimp or crab instead, but that almost like cheating. Looks like this joint will be super popular with the lunch crowd (I really admire people who can wait in sch long lines). A tip: go for dinner, it’s as quiet as can be.
Againn Tavern
Againn Tavern, the restaurant people have such a hard time pronouncing is shutting its Rockville doors. The Feast spoke to Whisk Group CEO Mark Weiss, and he says there’s a possibility of reopening after Memorial Day. For now, you can always go to Againn in DC.
Entertaining
If you like entertaining, Metrocurean brings us some Perfect Summer Party Menu ideas. Think International Backyard Bash or No Fuss Chili Party.
Happy Eating!
We Love Music: A Q&A with Rene Moffatt
Photo by Cameron Whitman // www.cameronwhitmanphotography.com
Rene Moffatt wasn’t always a songwriter. Though, he confesses to always being a songwriter at heart. Moffatt grew up in Texas and sang in the elementary school choir while taking piano lessons. He soon switched over to sports, ultimately landing himself a gig as a collegiate soccer player for three years. But being an athlete never stopped him from playing the piano.
Moffatt spent most of his college years on the east coast, returning to his home of Texas and eventually graduating with a degree in communications and design which he has since put to good use. After six or so years of doing what he calls “non-music” work, he knows it wasn’t wasted. In fact, Moffatt can be viewed as a musician of all trades.
He is responsible not only for all the songs on his latest release “Here and Now is Home” (which is now available on iTunes), but for the posters, fliers, and branding he’s brought to his individual product.
Moffatt took a few minutes to share his musical journey with We Love DC. Here’s a recap of that conversation after the page break.
By Tom Bridge
Have you seen Matt Hill?
This comes to us by friend-of-the-blog Nathan Martin. Matt Hill, pictured above, went missing on Tuesday morning after leaving the Verizon Center in his black 1996 Honda Civic with DC plate DT2747. He hasn’t been seen since, nor has his car. There’s a Facebook group going for coordinating the search for Mr. Hill started by his friends. They have opened up cases with MPD and ACPD. If you’ve seen Matt, or his missing car, please let the police or his friends know. Details after the jump.
By Brittany
First Look: SAX Restaurant & Lounge
"Sax Restaurant & Lounge-9" by Spiggycat
The first thing I notice as I walk in to the opening party of SAX, the new Metro Center area restaurant and lounge, is not the luxury-goth club decor or even the writhing bodies behind plate glass above the bar. All of that comes later. What hits me first is that the average age of the patrons hovers closer to that of my mother than myself. Not unusual for a posh DC spot, perhaps, but this one has been over the top in marketing of their “sexy cabaret” theme concept, so I feel a bit uncomfortable, expecting to bump in to a woman from my mom’s book club around every gold-leafed corner.
People will call this crowd “diverse,” but it is a very specific kind of diverse. Which is to say, there are equal parts black and white, male and female, and rather a lot of gay men for a place selling so much female flesh. Really, though, they all seem just alike. Every woman looks like a high-price real estate agent or divorce attorney – or at least like they have one of each in their Blackberry contacts. The men wear shiny cufflinks and smirky, goofy facial expressions, but not ties. These are not my people and this is not my kind of place, but I knew that going in and cannot really judge them for it. These people and their ilk will throw each other many “fun” and “crazy” fiftieth birthday parties here and will enjoy themselves immensely, thinking they are just so outrageous.
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