Category Archives: The Daily Feed

The Daily Feed
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Hot Ticket: Dinosaur Jr. w/ OFF! @ 9:30 Club, 6/25/11

On Saturday night the 9:30 Club has the fixings for the tastiest show of the week.

Ingredients:

– One legendary noise-rock band (Dinosaur Jr.) performing their most revered album (“Bug”) in its entirety.
– One hardcore icon (Henry Rollins) interviewing the same legendary noise-rock band (Dinosaur Jr.) live on-stage.
– One hardcore super-group lead by Keith Morris setting the whole party OFF! with a bang.

Optional Ingredients:
– Both lead singers of the legendary punk outfit Black Flag under the
same roof.*

There are going to be more legends and icons in the house on Saturday night then my brain can compute. This show gets a resounding “HELL YEAH!” from me. It will be a fantastic confluence of amazing musical personalities and mind-blowing sonic intensity. Do yourself a favor and get on these tickets ASAP!

Dinosaur Jr.
w/ OFF! and Henry Rollins
@ 9:30 Club
6/25 – 8pm
$30

* The last time this happened was the West Memphis Three benefit concert and it was fucking magic.

News, The Daily Feed
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Shortly after Nationals win 11th of 12, Manager Jim Riggleman Resigns

Photo courtesy of
‘Washington Nationals manager Jim Riggleman (5) and Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter (26)’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

Shortly after today’s dramatic 9th inning 1-0 win over the Seattle Mariners, the team’s 11th in 12 games, and 16th in 21 games, Manager Jim Riggleman quit his job over a contract dispute with the Washington Nationals.

The world is pretty much stunned by the news, both that the Nationals were uninterested in talking with Riggleman about an extension on his contract, and that Riggleman would make that sort of ultimatum in the middle of a winning streak, and while the team’s record was just barely over .500.

One person that I spoke with about the issue, said “There’s having a winning average and actually, you know, winning something or even making the playoffs. Before you start making demands like “I’m not getting on the bus until you pick up my option” you should really learn the difference.”

It’s not clear who will manage the Nationals tomorrow in Chicago, or what the longterm plans are. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, we’ll have more thoughts in the morning

The Daily Feed
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No Chompie for Shark Week

Photo courtesy of
‘Happy Shark Week 2010!’
courtesy of ‘Dan Dan The Binary Man’

This aggression will not stand, Discovery Channel.  Sure, your fancy building Silver Spring employs hundreds, if not thousands, but until you reinstate the lovable inflatable Chompie the Shark, I’m not sure I can go along with your Shark Week Shenanigans.

I remember when you used to mean something, Discovery, I remember when Shark Week was all about sharks eating things, be they people, boats, or other fish-like creatures, and I remember that it was all about a giant inflatable shark that you would decorate your building with.

Now it’s about Andy Samberg? And a sharkless building?  To quote the Internet, “What, sir, is this fuckery?”

The Daily Feed
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This is an outrage

YouTube Preview Image

Seen here is the arrest of Pete Tucker, for the crime of reporting on government business. At the end you see another official assert that “you don’t have permission to record.” Shortly afterward the individual taking the video, Jim Epstein, was arrested himself. You can read his details of the whole thing here.

The suggestion that any government meeting open to the public cannot be recorded or photographed in a non-distruptive way is offensive an unacceptable. Thankfully some of the commission seems to agree.

The Daily Feed
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Washington Post begs Twitter to please buy a paper

The Post's Begging Tweet

The tweet from @postlocal, the Washington Post’s local desk, itself is simple: “We love the RTs, but you know, you could read a lot of these stories by simply feeding 75 cents into a corner newspaper box.”

What it says to Twitter, and those who follow the Post is: “Oh God, online ad revenue is down, and couldn’t you please just go buy a paper for God’s sake?”

Nice job with the passive aggressive voice, there, Washington Post.

News, The Daily Feed
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Tune Inn has kitchen fire

The Tune Inn

News is coming from Capitol Hill this morning that Hill-favorite The Tune Inn has suffered a kitchen fire that sparked massive response from DC Fire & EMS this morning on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Reports from some outlets are just coming in, and I suspect The Hill Is Home will have the best coverage as we work through the day.

The Tune Inn has been DC’s representative on the Best Bars in America for a number of years running.

Update: 9:45 I just got back from The Tune Inn, where the fire engines have all departed, and the cleanup has begun. According to the staff I spoke with, the damage is confined to the kitchen and the second level. The whole kitchen will need to be replaced after a grease fire destroyed much of the kitchen.  The bar area remained untouched thanks in part to the quick reflexes of the morning staff, who slammed the door shut when the fire broke out.  According to staff, the night spot should open again “in a few weeks”.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats mount historic rally, beat Mariners 6-5 in the 9th

Photo courtesy of
‘Bang! Zoom!’
courtesy of ‘John C Abell’

The biggest deficit that the Nationals have ever overcome in the 9th inning, going into tonight’s game, was 2 runs. Tonight they battled back from 4 runs behind, and with two outs in the ninth inning, mounted a 5-run rally capped by a monster home run off the bat of rookie Wilson Ramos into the left field stands.

After being limited to just a single run against the Mariners’ Doug Fister, the Nationals came into the ninth inning down 5-1.  Jayson Werth, now sporting just a soul patch, having earlier shaved his beard, confounded Justin Smoak with a hard hit ball to first.  It deflected right off the glove of Smoak and Werth was at 2nd with no one out. Roger Bernadina drew a 7-pitch walk, the Nats were suddenly threatening.  Ryan Zimmerman grounded into a 6-4-3 double play just three pitches later, and it looked very much like Brandon League would be getting himself out of another jam.  Jerry Hairston Jr., who entered the game when Laynce Nix aggravated his right Achilles tendon, struck a single up the middle, plating Werth for the first run of the ninth.

The Nationals were now threatening in earnest, having been limited to just three more batters than the minimum by Fister through eight full.  Morse made strong contact off a slide from League, and hit it into the Mariners’ closer, ricocheting the ball back toward the 3rd base-line, and injuring League.  With the trainers coming out, it looked like the Mariners might add injury to insult.  With two down in the 9th, the Nationals had the tying run at the plate in Danny Espinosa, ratching the crowd of 21,502 into action.  Hungry for a rally, Espinosa hit the very first pitch from Danny Pauley up the middle, scoring Hairston, making it 5-3.  Wilson Ramos came to the plate as the winning run, and he just pounded an 84-mph changeup from Pauley into the left field seats to bring the house down on the Mariners.

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The Daily Feed
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Worse than the dance-off

Photo courtesy of
‘it’s cocktail hour somewhere’
courtesy of ‘ekelly80’

Another day, another speech restriction. This time it’s upholding a restriction against anti-abortion protester Patrick Mahoney and his desire to do chalk writing on the pavement outside the White House.

If you want my opinion – and even if you don’t – this is a worse decision than the Oberwetter case that inspired the Jefferson Memorial dance protests. They’re both based on the same justifications that Kevin told you about here – a content-neutral restriction and a compelling government interest. It certainly seems to me, though, that it’s kinda cruddy to lump in washable chalk with spray painting something or taking a hammer to it.

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History, The Daily Feed
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Smithsonian Snapshot: Good Humor Truck

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

This week’s Smithsonian Snapshot helps us to herald in the start of summer. Good Humor, the well-known “ice cream on a stick,” was created by candy-maker Harry Burt in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1920.

His first candy invention was the Jolly Boy Sucker, a lollipop on a stick. While working in his ice cream parlor, Burt created his own recipe for a smooth chocolate coating that would be compatible with ice cream. His daughter Ruth performed the first taste test. Although it tasted good, Ruth thought it was too messy to eat. To solve this problem, Burt took the advice of his son, Harry Jr., who suggested freezing wooden sticks used for the Jolly Boy Sucker into the ice cream as handles. He named his new creation the Good Humor bar, capitalizing on the belief that a person’s “humor” or outlook on life was related to the humor of the palate. Burt immediately sent the patent to Washington, D.C.

From the beginning, Good Humor bars were peddled in gleaming white trucks by salesmen in white uniforms. By the mid-1930s, Good Humor bars were sold throughout most of the country. The pictured 1938 Chevrolet truck is believed to have operated in the Boston area.

The Daily Feed
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DDOT expands ParkMobile pay by phone parking program

Photo courtesy of
‘Obey…the 2-hour parking’
courtesy of ‘Hoffmann’

With the pilot program completed, and a winner chosen, DDOT announced this afternoon that pay-by-phone parking is now available in a large portion of Northwest DC, with more meters and multispace areas coming in the near future. By the end of July, every metered and multispace metered space in DC will support the ParkMobile service, allowing drivers to pay for parking with credit cards with a simple phone call.

The currently available areas are mostly north of I Street NW, west of 9th Street NW, south of T Street NW, and east of Wisconsin Avenue NW. Click through for a bit more of a map, and a link to a geotagged map. Continue reading →

News, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Can please get a .dc domain now?

Photo courtesy of
‘MicroLink Modem 56K’
courtesy of ‘Markusram’

Late yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the concept of the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) which will open up a fairly wide landscape of domain suffixes like .com and .org to new members.  While the number of Top Level Domains have expanded in recent years, the .dc suffix is still entirely unclaimed.

It could be a boon for the District to pickup the .dc gTLD to use for area businesses to highlight their work in the District, either to DC residents, or as proof they are a locally operating business. I know that we would happily pay for welove.dc, and I suspect that the various tour companies that operate tours to the area would make the investment if it was tied to some sort of competitive advantage.

It would be incredibly important for the DC OCTO to move quickly, though, as I suspect that they won’t be the only ones looking to be the registrar for that gTLD, and to lose control of that resource would be a pretty significant failure. Let’s get on it, OCTO, we’ll help you if we can.

The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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The White House on Zillow, only $262M!

Photo courtesy of
‘Hi Honey. I’m home!’
courtesy of ‘cruffo’

When you consider that the winning campaign in the 2008 Presidential Election spent about $800M or so to achieve victory, Zillow’s prediction concerning 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at $262M of value seems a bit off. Now, the 16 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms, not to mention an attached garage, make it a pretty nice house, not to mention all of the security features that it contains, many of which aren’t listed in the property detail.

At 55,000 square feet, it does cut a stunning profile, and there’s central air and heat, so you’ve got that going for you. I hear the owner’s in a load of debt, so they could probably turn it into some quick cash if you threw a bunch of money at them.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nationals drop game to Orioles 7-4, end streak at 8

Photo courtesy of
‘Moon over Nationals Park’
courtesy of ‘BrianMKA’

Streaks are hard things.

Streaks take you out of seeing the Big Picture, and they change your focus to the tiny reality of the streak.  Streaks of either kind aren’t microcosms, they’re localized disruptions of the normal. As a good friend said Sunday, “Losing streaks are the result of talent, while winning streaks are the result of luck.”

The Nationals came into Sunday’s game riding as high as they’ve been all season, winners of eight straight and 10 of their last 13. They didn’t hardly look like the same team on the field on Sunday. Maybe they indulged a bit too much at Saturday night’s Dream Foundation Gala, but the Nats just couldn’t get it going. 3 errors, and some rough plate appearances were their undoing, and they dropped the game, and the streak, in a 7-3 loss in front of 35,439.

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The Daily Feed
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Nationals enjoy the catbird seat, win eighth straight over O’s 4-2

Photo courtesy of
‘reach for the prize’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

The Nationals picked up their eighth straight victory on Saturday afternoon against the struggling Orioles and climbed to within a win of a .500 record.  They did it today on the bats of Michael Morse and Ryan Zimmerman, each of whom had a towering shot.  Zimmerman struck in the bottom of the first with a tape measure blast to left field that tied the game at one, and Morse struck a two-run shot, his thirteenth, in the sixth, putting the Nats ahead for good.

Jordan Zimmermann, despite struggling a bit in the first few innings, put together 6 1/3 IP of 2-run ball, and picked up his 5th win. His record is now 5-6, and his ERA dropped just slightly to 3.08. Drew Storen saved his 17th game of the season, facing just three batters in the 9th. Henry Rodriguez came in to pitch 1.2 IP in the 6th and 7th, and pitched the Nationals out of a nasty jam in the sixth.  Rodriguez sent Adam Jones down on just three pitches, two 83-mph sliders sandwiching a 101-mph fastball. As Mark Zuckerman said, “That’s just not fair.”

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats rack up 8 in 7th straight win, beat Orioles 8-4

Jayson Werth makes contact

Photos by Patrick Pho, special to We Love DC

Oh, for a real crosstown rivalry.

The Nationals came into the Battle of the Beltways (or whatever they’re calling it this year) on a tear, having won six straight, and having just swept the formerly hot Cardinals. Tonight, they put their best starter on the mound against a slumping Baltimore team, and the damnedest thing happened.  The Orioles ganged up for a dozen hits off Marquis, but only plated four runs. They’d pick up another half dozen against the Nationals’ bullpen, but couldn’t strike again, while the Nationals picked up 8 runs on just 10 hits, striking for 7 runs on 6 hits in the fifth and sixth innings.

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