Purple

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

Honor By August at 9:30

Saturday’s early-doors show at 9:30 Club is a great (almost) All DC show, featuring Jubeus and The Dreamscapes Project, as well as Folk-Rock act Justin Trawick (who we’ve seen before) before Honor By August headlines the show, their first at the 9:30. I’m really looking forward to this show, as it will be HBA’s first headliner gig at the 9:30 and I suspect they’ll be bringing their A game and hopefully some of the tracks from their new recently released album. Girls, their guitarist Evan, though married, is good to drool over see in person. Tickets are mighty reasonable, be there.

Ali Marcus at Galaxy Hut

DC-born-and-raised Ali Marcus is doing a few shows in her hometown this winter, starting with a show Saturday afternoon at Galaxy Hut. Though she lives in Seattle now, she’s doing an East Coast tour with a show starts at 2 on Saturday at the hut, as well as one at Iota in mid-February. Marcus’ solo guitar and harmonica blues-folk revival is not to be missed live.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I wonder what time Oprah comes on? I haven’t watched her show in years. I remember watching her when I was a kid and thinking she was soooo cool. Isn’t she like the richest woman on the planet now? I wonder if she’ll ever run for president? That would be crazy. President Winfrey. I think I’d move to Australia at that point…

Oh hi, DC! I didn’t know you were there. My brain is in a little bit of a fog at the moment. I seem to have caught some sort of cold or flu that’s left me bedridden for the past two days. As if my flu aches weren’t enough, laying in bed makes me even more achy. Seriously, I have a question for you though. What’s the best takeout food for a sicko like me? I really don’t want to leave my house, otherwise I’d go to Whole Foods for a giant bowl of their chicken noodle soup. Do you have any suggestions? My ailing body would really appreciate it.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It seems that a deal has been reached on an economic stimulus package (heh, I said stimulus package) that would put a bunch of fluid dollars into the hands of Americans everywhere. If you make less than $75k, look for a check around $600. Married couple? $1200.

So, if this is truly to be economic stimulus, how can we best spend it in the DC area? I don’t think big chains need any more of our money, so maybe it’s time to look at local businesses that could use a few extra bucks, so that takes out a whole bunch of stores. So, for the best local effect, maybe shops like Belmont TV might be the place to go for electronics and whatnot. Shops like Kramers and Politics & Prose for books. DC is blessed with an abundance of non-chain restaurants, so maybe a night out with your hubby/sweetie would be a good idea, as well.

If you’re going to get stimulated, you might as well help out some of the local businesses, yeah? Where are you going to spend your rebate?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Just in case you still think TSA is a great group of people that Keep America Safeâ„¢ from the terrorists, please take note of this story from last Sunday, when a West Virginia man carried a loaded firearm undetected past security. And, when he realized what he was carrying, he went back to let TSA know of their fuckup, he was arrested by Airport Police for his trouble.

There are moments when I seriously think that guys like Ron Paul have a good point. Then I remember that Ron Paul is batshit crazy and would do equally crazy things like reinstate the gold standard. This does nothing, though, to remind people not to carry their firearms aboard national transit, which I think we should all talk about more.

Want to own a gun? Great. All for that. Just don’t carry it unless you need it. On the airplane? Not so much with the needing that. Please pack accordingly.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

image courtesy of B Tal

We’ve now discussed the Tistadt Audio Meltdown (sounds like the successor to Big Audio Dynamite, don’t it? (oops I think that dates me somewhat)) a few times and I was inclined to let it go.

Till I read Marc Fisher’s column about it in the print edition today.

And now I feel like maybe I’m not ready to let it go, primarily because this tweaks one of my hot button points: people confusing technology issues with societal ones. It perturbs me that Fischer claims that student Devraj Kori “knows no boundaries” because he dared to share an abusive and rude message from a school employee with others, but that’s not what sets me off. What makes me nuts is the quotes from another school employee, Ron McClain, director of the Parkmont School in the District.

It used to be you could have an inappropriate or rude conversation with someone, and it would stay private. There’s a much fuzzier line between public and private now. This is a case where the technology has outpaced our ability to cope with its effects. As parents, we’re way behind.

If there’s an age gap here it’s not the one Fisher and McClain seem to think. I don’t know Fisher’s age but McClain’s bio says he graduated from Harvard a year after I was born, probably putting him about 20-25 years older than me. So here’s your proof this has nothing to do with a “wired age,” folks, since my mom told me very clearly how to deal with the effects of a technology that prevents you from having an “inappropriate or rude conversation with someone” without other people finding out and hearing it:

Don’t say things that you’re not willing to have other people hear.

If Mr or Mrs Tistadt, Marc Fisher, Ron McClain, or any of the rest of you have a concern that something impolite you say to someone else – no matter how much “above” that person you might think you are – then you can exert complete and total control over that disbursal by not saying it at all.

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

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