I’ve spent most of this week in Los Angeles working a conference with long hours, hard work, and we’re all pretty near exhaustion. I can’t think of one of us who wouldn’t rather be in DC right now, sleeping in our own beds, riding the Metro, getting a half-smoke at one of the ubiquitous downtown hotdog stands, wandering the wide boulevards that run throughout town.

LA is a constant mélange; strip malls, odd apartment buildings, hotels, offices, it all runs together in some sort of constant urban noise. I miss the lines of DC, the grid of the District and the familiar street names. Even the sunshine here and the warm weather, and the incredible sunsets, there’s something to be said for our distinctive neighborhoods, for our business districts, for our homey neighborhoods, or lovely, large parks.

I didn’t think I’d ever miss DC. I’m a California-native, born and raised in the fertile country between Sacramento and San Francisco and every inch a Californian at heart. I still root hard for the 49ers, and hard for the Oakland A’s, but I find myself following the Nationals, the Redskins, and even reading the occasional box score for the Caps. DC is a city full of transplants, with rare natives around to keep us all honest in claiming our adoptive city as home. Yet, I find myself desirous of seeing the Jefferson Memorial on the drive home, or gazing down Pennsylvania Avenue at lunch to see the Capitol.

Some things even California cannot offer, and that is the dignity and presence of Washington’s stately streets. The new West does not do stately, or majesty, in ways that the East can recognize. For that, I will always love my adopted home in DC.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s Thursday night. It’s late. Maybe even 1am. You are drunk. You have a vague memory of the night. There were women present. None really talked to you, but they were there. You might have given out your card. You did dry heave in the cab. You probably can’t go back to the bar – something about trying beer pong, not Beirut on the fancy new ping pong tables.

Right, its coming back to you now, like sobriety will in the morning. It was the , DCist happy hour! Like the Metblog happy hour, you had a great time and got wasted. Maybe there were even other people involved! That would be a first.

No matter, you know you had a good time, you know you were cool; you know it was the DCist you imagined. You know it was almost rocking at the Metblog level, and you know you’d never be biased.

Yep, you know it’s was a damn good time. And why weren’t you there?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I pondered posting earlier in the week about the blogfight going on between the WaPo’s ombudsman and Media Matters but decided it was a little too net-centric for us. I try to err on the side of caution there since I’m a high-order nerd and some of my obsessions are a little rarified.

This seems pretty wide-reaching, however. The Washington Post’s online division, washingtonpost.com, apparently caught so much ire from people unhappy with their ombudsman’s recent statements that they decided to turn off comments on the post.blog. While I’m sympathetic to having to deal with ugly comments – DC Metblogs gets the occasional crank and a fair amount of spam that has to be dealt with – it seems to me that you don’t respond to heated criticism by taking your ball and going home.

Particularly not when it’s over your ombudsman declaring she’s just not going to respond anymore. Maybe I’m not understanding m-w on this. “one that investigates reported complaints (as from students or consumers), reports findings, and helps to achieve equitable settlements”

Sure sounds like she should be responding…

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Have you ever wondered what was the geographic center of DC? Where you could stand and be equal distant from all the borders? Did you assume that was under the Capitol Dome, where the four quadrants intersect?

I have to admit, I never thought of it, maybe because I have a life, but apparently others have. Real geography nerds who count borders and markers. Guys like Andrew Wiseman who took the time recently to discern the exact geographic center of Washington now, and as originally designed.

Where are those two points, the pre-and post-annexation of Arlington by NoVA geographic centers of DC, you might ask? Well check out his post so I guess I am a geography nerd to find out.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Earlier this week I waxed poetic about Fat Pig and how much I enjoyed it. If you’re considering listening to my opinion… well, you’d be the first.

But on the off chance that you take my advice, this weekend would be a good time to do it. This weekend if you go see the 2pm matinee of Fat Pig, you can hang around after the show and participate in a discussion with the playwright himself, Neil LaBute. It’s mentioned here in the pitch for “A Day in Labuteville,” a package deal that gets you in to all three of the LaBute performances, but I suspect that attendees of the 2:00pm matinee of Fat Pig will be welcome to stay for the discussion as well.

If you’re not interested in asking him about the films he wrote, In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors and The Shape of Things, or the ones he directed, Possession and Nurse Betty, you could always ask him, “Is Nick Cage as weird to work with as people say?”

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

If the Cincinnati Reds are worth $360M, then what will the Nationals go for? Clearly Cincinnati’s a much smaller city than DC, with less than half our population, and in 2003, they held the crown for most declining city. Meanwhile, with a much larger potential fanbase, a new stadium on the way paid for by corporate welfare local taxpayers, the owners of the Nationals could be a baseball cash cow potentially worth as much as the stadium deal at final reckoning. That is, of course, if MLB ever decides to actually sell the damn thing.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

This was the view this morning from my apartment – beautiful, eh? Yep, thanks to the east-facing windows of my living room I get this view every morning. Or well every morning I’m awake at sunrise. And today I wanted to share. Enjoy!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

While WFY is getting BoingBoing-ed for his Barryversary, DC’s own Mark Jenkins got BoingBoing-ed a few minutes before for his Meter Pops street installation. Now while a double DC entry on BoingBoing is reason for DC to celebrate, I wonder if Boing Boing noticed one small little detail:

Marks’ Meter Pop’s installation date of January 17, 2005.

Check your dates next time BoingBoing. His current work is in Fairfax parks.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

You think you know concrete? You think that hard stuff around your office building is the only way it comes? Did you know it can be so light that it floats in water, or so translucent you can see shadows through it? How about come in colors like bright white, or like in the National Gallery of Art East Wing, pink like marble?

This is the ability of concrete, and over at the National Building Museum, one of my favorites, they have a very cool exhibition of concrete and its many forms – Liquid Stone. Unlike concrete, which heats up for the first 24 hours, and then cools for the next 24 years, this exhibition is hot until January 29, then gone for good.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Poem to Wednesday
By Poet Lawyerette

sad wednesday.
you make me so blue.

the pinnacle
of work-week despair,
not able to look ahead,
yet…

not yet clear of my case
of the mondays.

somebody’s got a case of the mondays…
on wednesday.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Now here is a hand Google Mashup for those in the real estate biz – DCHomePrices.com. They list all the public record home sales in DC on a Google Map of the city so you can what’s sold in your hood, when, and for how much.

They have sales data for the last 12 months, 1000,000 sales they claim, which makes for a very interesting read. Or a shocking one. I looked at sales in the last 12 months in my zip code: 233 in 20010.

Yikes! Anyone not sell a place last year?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Well, we thought they’d been sold already. Apparently not.

If you’ve got $20-some-odd million dollars just sitting around doing nothing, you could own your own soccer franchise. The United have been pretty damn good of late, winning more championships in the last decade than any of the other franchises for the last quarter century. Combined.

So, yeah, soccer team, for sale, all serious offers considered.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Well, if you’re a burger flipper in Maryland, then life gets a lot better for you right about now. A Dollar an Hour better, if that can really be considered all that better to begin with. The Maryland Senate overrode Governor Ehrlich’s veto for the second time in the last seven days.

So, to recap, DC’s minimum wage is $7. Maryland’s is $6.15. Virginia is $5.15. Lesson to all? Minimum wage sucks least in DC.

Technorati Tags: DC, Maryland, local politics

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Although I’ve never trotted out to wave a banner on the steps of the Supreme Court, I take a slightly greater than average interest in their goings-ons. For example, I’m pleased today to see a ruling from them barring the Federal government from interfering in State law on doctor-assisted suicide on the obviously disingenuous basis of controlling the use of legal drugs.

Okay, I can see your eyes glazing over from here, sorry.

My personal obsessions aside, I keep up on this news via the excellent SCOTUSBlog, SCOTUS being Supreme Court Of The United States. It’s run by the lawfirm Goldstein and Howe based in the District, whose web page claims they are “the nation’s only Supreme Court litigation boutique.” I’m going to let you make your own snark over that bit of PR pontification.

If you’re at all a law nerd you’ll find SCOTUSBlog’s coverage of the goings-on of the Roberts’ Bunch to be worthwhile, if sometimes a little too dense for us non-lawyers to comprehend.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Oh my gosh… Carvel is coming to DC.

Those of us who grew up in the immediate environs of New York City and the “tri-state area” should now instantly have a flashback to those crazy commercials of our youth and the sugary ice cream cakes of childhood birthday parties (and of course, “Carvel ice cream cakes” has to be pronounced like you have a huge mouthful of cookie dough, a la Tom Carvel himself). So excited!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I used to be a member of the Mafia. The “Catholic Mafia,” that is. Still confusing this with a small town in Sicilia known as Corleone? Really, it’s not like that at all. This is a term used by alumni of the Catholic University of America’s small but illustrious drama department to explain the phenom of CUA graduates constantly bumping into each other throughout their theater careers. Though I’ve long left that world behind, I still try and keep up with my alma mater, especially now that two of my fantastic mentors when I was in school are currently running the department.

So I thought I’d alert you to a fundraising event they are having February 3 ($30), 4 and 5 ($25). Billed as a “Reunion” of four distinguished alumni – Philip Bosco, David Sabin, Robert Mili, and Barbara Andres – it’s a staged reading of George Bernard Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell” at the Hartke Theater.

Many years ago at the beginnings of the Washington theater scene, CUA’s drama department was the only gig in town. It should be a real treat to see actors from that generation together and then be able to mingle with them and other members of the “Mafia” afterwards at a post-show reception (that’s only on the night of 2/3, unfortunately my birthday so I’ll have to miss it).

All proceeds will go to the Dean’s Scholarship Endowment, providing financial assistance for Drama Department undergraduates. People would be mistaken to think that Catholic has a large endowment. And the proud history of the Drama Department, intertwined with the history of Washington theater, shouldn’t be ignored. For more on that legacy, check out a biography of the founder, Father Hartke.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Aww yeah, what’s better than one blog-based happy hour this week? How about two blog-based happy hours!

• The first one, started by the unbeknownst-to-me-till-now United Weblogger Meetup Day group looks like it’s gonna be an assembly of random DC “bloggers, commenters, readers, linkers, lurkers, and what have you” so far 30 RSVPs strong for a par-tay on Wednesday in Mackeys @ 1828 L Street.
• Next up we have those crazy kids over at DCist throwing a happy hour to prove “we’re not just Internet dorks, speaking in binary as we hatch nefarious blogger plans in smoke-filled rooms.” Well that remains to be seen, but they did score seemingly cooler digs, Cue Bar @ the north side of U Street, between 11th and 12th Streets for Thursday. Just one question DCist – why you pick a bar w/o a website?

Oh and yes, DCMB will be at both, in style. Good times? Of course. Photos? You bet. Babbling about both on DCMB? Expect nothing less.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

While Tom is mixing up his holidays and there are memorials all across DC I’m home doing my own MLK Day vigil.

While not as significant as anything related to Dr. King, I know it’s a vigil that you can personally relate to. I’m doing the UPS Guy vigil. Yes, I am an American consumer, I shop online, and therefore I am beholden to Mr. UPS and Mr. FedEx for my goodies.

Usually I have them sent to work, where the office secretary gives me a shout-out when my loot arrives, but recently online merchants that specialize in electronics, my weakness, have started shipping only to the address associated with your credit card. This means I have to do a timing dance with the building manager of my apartment, timing my departures or arrivals to her inconvenient 8-5 office hours. Who is home at those times, I ask you? But I digress.

Because she has the day off, and my smoking hot grapics card is on a UPS truck somewhere in DC, I’m home awaiting the UPS Guy. If I miss him, he’ll deliver it tomorrow to the building manager and it will be Wednesday morning before I can grab he card from her and Wednesday night before I can break the seal on Age of Empires III, and GTA San Andreas, among other graphic-intensive games Santa brought this Xmas.

So here I wait, looking out my window every few minutes, hoping to catch him in action. Hoping to see that brown truck pull up, stop, and out jump the man with the part in the box dear to my heart. Hoping also to be free of the wait, to get outside today, once at least, and enjoy my day off.

Mid-post update: As I am writing this I saw a UPS truck pull up to the intersection in front of my apartment building, and then keep going. Agh! What a way to teas a man. Mr. UPS Guy, where are you? My mouse trigger finger is getting twitchy with rendered pixel withdrawals!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Thought it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Not in Virginia, where it’s Lee-Jackson Day. That will take you to Gov. Warner’s 2004 proclamation celebrating Lee-Jackson Day.

Unreal. I didn’t realize it was all that contentious to name a holiday for a civil rights leader who was later shot in the head for standing up for what he believed in. Apparently, it’s a giant deal to Virginia, who chose to name the day for Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, prominent figures in the Civil War, er, War of Northern Aggression…

Pardon me for saying, but this is fucked up. Sure we don’t have the parade for Martin today, we’re having it in April instead, but instead of honoring the memory of a man who sought to equalized rights between the races, we’re honoring generals who fought to protect the difference between them.

That’s fucked up.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Okay, so I am a little late on the review of Fat Pig that I promised you. So sue me.

In a nutshell, I recommend it. If you want a comparison to the other LaBute works I’ve seen – the film version of In the Company of Men and Studio’s 2002 production of The Shape of Things – it’s funnier, but every bit as brutal. Possibly more so, since I think this script makes the lead characters more likeable but just as flawed as the leads in Company and Shape.

If you don’t want any of the story spoiled for you, don’t read any farther.

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