Monday, June 29, 2009

Nationals Paaak

Besides the time I got to play Guitar Hero with Aerosmith, all my run ins with the city of Boston have been negative. It’s mostly due to the entirety of the city’s highway system being underground causing one’s GPS to be less than ineffective. This arrangement has caused many a visitor to that fair city to get lost on the way to the airport and miss their fantasy football drafts. I think that’s why the Feds demanded an investigation into the Big Dig. Or at least why I demanded one.

On Wednesday, we went to the Fenway-on-the-Potomac to see the heroic Boston Red Sox play our local minor league team for charity. We’d been warned that the crowd at Nationals Park would be 10-1 in favor of Boston fans but that may be an understatement. There were a lot of pinkish, heavy-set woman with thick-necked boyfriends in Celtics jerseys. It was fantastically difficult to listen to.

If my calculations are correct, 30 years of ballpark visits has allowed me to see every team in the league. Boston was the last on my list. And it afforded me a chance to see Kevin Youkilis up close.



Yep. There is no other ballplayer in America that looks more like Wooly Willy, the magnetically-powered beard toy. You can get yours today at your favorite Cracker Barrel waiting area.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Also, why is the Dupont Circle stop so much better lit than the other stations?

I rode the red line 6 times yesterday. Three things to note:

1. Tourists are actively avoiding the last cars in the trains. I overheard them acknowledging out loud that it makes them uncomfortable. It’s most obvious at stations like Gallery Place-Chinatown where the escalator deposits riders at the end of the platform and forces you to walk the length of the train to get to the front.

2. It may have just been the series of trains I was on, but now that WMATA has temporarily suspended the automatic train operation system I find the ride to be much smoother. Twice, while engrossed in the babyish pages of Infinite Jest, I hadn’t even realized we had pulled into the station until the train stopped. The manual drivers seem to have a more controlled style of gradual braking. It was like flying a Thai Airways, if you know what I mean.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

really enjoying

- funny women

- this, which i think i've mentioned before but is cool enough that it deserves a second look.

- june

Friday, June 19, 2009

And Bill Cowher?

What are those toys called that are made of metal shells and have mashable buttons that cause those shells to spin so quickly that they reveal a little plastic chick or snowman or leprechaun inside depending on the holiday? They’re neither tops or דרײדל. But whatever they are, they're terrible toys.

Apparently, the NHL makes giant versions of them and hand em out to unsuspecting Russians as MVP awards.

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It’s Friday. So make sure to finger yourself before you go to bed tonight. Magically. Purely out of respect, of course. But make it count.

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BD Wong was at the White House today, for some reason. I saw it on the TV. I’m not sure why but Tony Hawk was there too. That’s him at 0:43. In front of Bobby Flay.

What the hell is going on over there?

get a GRIP cusack. pull it TOGETHER man.

"2010" plot summary by The N:

John Cusack is trying to save the world in a movie called "Independence Day Stood Still." Him and his alien child are trying to outrace a tsunami on a plane filled with convicts so he can make it to his high school reunion on time. Something explodes. Oh, and Annette Bening is his mom who he sleeps with. The end.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

cathy cartoon, kind of

Do you ever have one of those days where you spend a significant amount of your desk time orbitzin' tickets to London just because you know their candy is SO FAR SUPERIOR to what is offered around here, say especially on K St?

Fuck yes you have.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

little thangs

I'm looking to make friends with some Hip Girls between the ages of 24-28 who will come to my house to party. The kind of party where I throw open my closet doors and say: "here, fix this" and they are given full permission to throw away anything dorky (ie my entire wardrobe.)

In other more hilarious news, K. just told me she's "hiding her good TV" from the cable guy in case he decides to come back to rob her later. Man, do I miss her.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

huge Mexican hats

Would you, dear reader, believe that there was once a Mexican restaurant in Arlington called El Sombrero that delivered orders of chips and salsa in a sombrero? Silly, but believable, right? How about if the chips were scattered around the brim and the salsa bowl was nestled into the top? Okay, sure. But what if I told you the entire appetizer arrived at your table on the head of a midget?

No one ever believes me.

Obviously, the final aspect of that story is the one that most often gives people pause. It’s also a FACT that only my immediate family is willing to recognize. As a child, my sister, parents and I were all served chips and salsa in a sombrero by a midget. Does a photograph or a film or any other piece of evidence corroborate this memory? Unfortunately not. But I doubt all four of us are suffering from a strange and acute delirium that would cause us to recall this event in the exact same manner. It happened. It is fact.

The closest thing I can find as proof is a paragraph out a 1977 Washington Post restaurant review.
The restaurant, which has been at Lee Highway and N. Harrison St. in Arlington for eight years, is spacious and hospitable. The decor is rather plush - thick carpets, Mexican art work and huge Mexican hats.
Note the reference to the “huge Mexican hats.” May I argue that they were actually regular Mexican hats but were distorted because they were worn by tiny Mexican people? I may.

Of course, by the time I had dinner at this restaurant it was no longer called El Sombrero. In 1982 it was going by the name of Miguel’s Mexican Restaurant. It was pretty much the same place just a different name. But that too lasted only a few years.

I say “of course” because the building that housed both Miguel’s and Sombrero is that one building in every town that can never hold a business for more than a few months. It’s snake bit. It can be at a great location (which this one was) and sell a great product (which this one never really did) but it will never last. In my memory, it’s been five different restaurants, a movie rental store and most recently a business that sold used baby clothes, for some reason. It’s also the building that the hillbillies set their fireworks trailer up in front of every June 25 – July 5th.

It could be haunted. It could be cursed. It could have once been a skating rink where 12 sexy teens were murdered 100 years ago. On this very night. Bottom line, the term FAIL was designed for 5401 Lee Hwy, Arlington, VA.



With this history in mind, when T&D wanted to build a new bank in the area they decided to tear down a perfectly good gas station across the street instead of moving into this vexed structure. So for a few weeks, the once-Hollywood Video was nothing more than a staging ground for heavy earth movers.



And that’s why I failed to notice there was a new tenant.


I can’t tell you who’s going to win the primary to be Virginia’s Democratic candidate for Governor on June 9. But I can tell you that Brian Moran is going to lose. And it’s not because he’s raised the least amount of money of any of candidates. Or that his brother is Jim Moran. Or that the Post has endorsed Creigh Deeds. Or that Terry Mcauliffe wields the power of heterochromia.

It’s because the Brian Moran campaign has moved into the most foredoomed building in all of Arlington. And it doesn’t help that his campaign workers spend their entire day with giant wall murals of Batman Forever Two-Faced Tommy Lee Jones and a Riddling Jim Carrey grinning down on them all day long. It seems that when you’re last in fund raising, you can’t afford to paint the walls of the former Hollywood Video you now work out of. Having decade old movie murals as decorations also speaks to why Hollywood Video is no longer in business.



See, you can even make out an Eraser-era Arnold actively endorsing Brian Moran for Governor.

Like any sporting event I don’t have a vested interest in, I was just hoping that this race was going to be a good, clean game. That's not going to happen now. I hope the Vegas oddsmakers have taken this self inflicted handicap into account.