This coming Thursday October 21, 2004 is the third Thursday of the month, and thus all the galleries and art venues around the 7th Street corridor in downtown Washington will be having their extended hours. See the participating venues here.

Many of the artists are usually present, and most of the venues have wine and hors d’ouvres. Free and open to the public.

DC area artist Linda Hesh’s “Art Ads” are in the Washington Post today as small ads in the main national and world news section.

On Tuesday, October 19th, the interracial couple ad appears, and the gay couple ad will appear on Tuesday, October 26th.

According to Hesh, The New York Times refused to place these ads because their policy is that all advocacy ads must clearly state and opinion, and their opinion is that these do not.

This is one of the most original art ideas that I have been aware of in many years. Linda Hesh’s work has always eloquently discussed questions of race, ethnicity and gender issues, but “Art Ads” takes her artwork to a new public level of discourse.

Her pieces start with a photograph of a friend, or couple, taken at a commercial portrait studio, which gives the work a common, commercial look. She then adds a statement underneath the image, or digitally changes the image itself. Hesh

For my friend Mike’s birthday, we were all invited for Laser Tag. I didn’t realize that, well, Laser Tag places still exists, that they were so expensive, and they were so gosh darned fun! As sports go, it’s no racquetball or squash, no ultimate frisbee or kickball, but it sure makes for a bit of a workout, shooting with no bullets, firing away at phantom lights scampering through blacklight.

Heckuva good time, it was. Worth a shot.

I reluctantly took an extra ticket last night to go see PJ Harvey at the 930 Club and boy am I glad I did. I say reluctantly because I gave up on PJ Harvey after that song “Down by the Water” she put out a few years ago. I didn’t like it at all and assumed the rest of “To Bring You My Love” would be songs in the same vein. Namely not the raucous passion, unbridled guitar angst and supremely bitching vocals that I fell in love with on “Dry”, “Rid of Me” and the excellent “4-Track Demos”. So it’s been a few years since I gave old Polly Jean a listen.

The show last night was so f*cking powerful it’s forced me to reexamine my previous abandonment of her music and now I’m hell-bent on buying the three albums I skipped ASAP. This show was a powerful spectacle of fire and passion, PJ tore the roof of the club with her ultra-loud totally rocking backing band and her fiery she-demon vocals.

Seriously, to anyone out there who might be reading from the West Coast, Hurricane PJ is headed your way. Either board up your windows or do what I did last night, go out and dance in the eye of the storm!

Frequently, I travel for business by airplane, which leads to the ever-present airport dilemma. DC’s got three decent sized airports that serve it: IAD (Dulles), DCA (Reagan National) and BWI. I hate driving to Baltimore (contrary to what Tony Kornheiser thinks, I might as WELL be going to Nepal.) and parking at National is sparse, not to mention flights from there cost an arm and a leg, so it’s off to Dulles for me.

Usually, I’m a pretty mellow traveler, I get my ticket at the kiosk, I check a bag, I hit the security line, take out my laptop, put all of my techie bits through the X-ray, and away I go without a slight delay. Why? Because I wear sandals when I fly. It’s just what I do. I don’t care if it’s October and it’s only 40 degrees at 6am, it’s just easier than wearing real shoes, untying them, shoving them through an X-ray machine and then re-dressing myself when all is said and done. Except this morning I was told I could not wear my sandals through the metal detector.

“What?!?”

Yes. You heard me. I was made to take off my fucking sandals at a TSA Gestapopoint, er, Checkpoint. Here we are, making a fuss about my sandals, when we won’t X-ray the cargo hold of an aircraft, or check containers at the ports.

Grudgingly I told the TSA bozo what I thought of his policy (it’s likely I’m on a watch-list now.) and removed and X-rayed my sandals.

Sandals, people. Sandals. WTF.

There’s some ugly stuff going on in the battle for MD’s 8th district congressional seat. For those of you who don’t know, the 8th district includes parts of Montgomery and Prince George county and borders the north side of the district.

According to this Slashdot story, Charles Floyd, the Republican challenger to the seat, has set up anti- Van Hollen sites at www.vanhollen2004.com & .org & .net. Whether or not this is a legal thing to do, this certainly ain’t purty. Add to that the attack ads for the MD sentate seat and it’s turning out to be one dirty fight.

Are any other local races turning ugly? We already know Marion Barry’s back…

another one bites the dust. hope key, the-hole-in-the-wall, hong kong-style, open-so-late-but-oh-so-good chinese restaurant has fallen to the evil clutches of being converted to yet another thai restaurant in arlington, va. i performed a random search (somewhat legit), and found there are more thai restaurants in arlington than any other kind (excluding american and pizza).

i’ve been going to hope key for the past 4 years. i dare to say it rivals any chinese restaurant in the area — chinatown in dc has no chance. hope key’s ownership changed about 1.5 years ago. but only a month ago through this thai changeover, this management decided to spruce the place up with new tables, carpet, neon lights and replaced the noodle wok and hanging ducks w/ a fully-loaded bar (coz you gotta have a martini with your curry sauce or pad thai).

sigh…now it’s not so special…and where am i going to get my chicken chow fun at 2 AM? any suggestions???

Via DC Foodies, which I just discovered today, comes the revelation that Galileo’s chef conducts cooking classes.

I’m so there…

Tom and I noticed on the Metro today on our way to the Book Festival, that DC’s Emergency Management Agency will now send text alerts to your phone or email address in case of an emergency.

While I certainly applaud the embracing of new communications technologies, I have to wonder what this will mean…

“D00d! Terrists r teh sux0r!!1!”

“Evacu8. CU L8R.”

“2 L8 4 U! LOLOL!1″

The National Book Festival is on the Mall this Saturday, featuring a diverse set of authors from all genres, including my personal favorite, Neal Stephenson. He’s speaking from 10:45 to 11:25 and signing books from 12 to 1. I’ll be there, camera in hand! Is Your Favorite Author Coming?