A Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial is being planned for the Mall, and those organizing the establishment of it are more than a third of the way to their goal of raising $100 million for it. Washington Mystics owner Sheila Johnson is planning to donate $1 million on behalf of her kids. This ties into the Kids for King essay contest that will let 12 winners attend the groundbreaking in September of next year. The groundmaking ceremony will take place near the Lincoln Memorial, the site of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The King memorial is set to open in 2008.

Yesterday, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd proposed an amendment to an appropriations bill that would provide $10 million towards the memorial. Fortunately, it passed. Byrd used to be a member of the KKK and is obviously going to great lengths to make up for that.

Congress authorized the memorial in 1996, but fundraising has been focused on corporations. Now fundraisers are turning to individual donors, which is obviously paying off. You can get more info or donate to the fund here. It’s about time we had a King memorial! I’m kind of surprised we don’t already have one.

How do the crips do it? How do they get around the Metro using the Metro elevators? I guess many times they don’t, and are reduced to swearing at Metro in frustration.

I sure felt like swearing yesterday as I tried to navigate the Metro with my bicycle. Allowed outside of rush hour, I was taking my bike out to the ‘burbs for a NoVA to DC bike ride and encountered the slowness of the Metro elevators. Slowness that even three-towed sloths are impressed by.

From the pushing of the button to the arrival of an elevator was a watching grass grow wait. Then you could easily load 100,000 superballs, one by one, in the time it took the doors to open and then close. Add in the super-slow transit time to the door open-close move at the other floor and I think I aged a decade in my short four elevator transit of Metro’s transit system.

Hey Metro, how ’bout an express elevator system? Just make sure to get permits first.

Well, the DC area has one less Talk Radio Host as of today, WMAL fired Michael Graham for his anti-Islam remarks. Michael has proved so delicately for all of us that while you do have a right to free speech as guaranteed by the Constitution, you have no right to be an asshole and not have to suffer for it.

Of course, talk radio hosts are a dime a dozen, so it’s one down, 20,000 to go…man I miss Art Bell.

John Allen Muhammad, one of the two men convicted of the sniper shootings, is now in Maryland for a second murder trial. He’s not happy about it, obviously. Six of the shootings took place in Montgomery County, which is why Muhammad and Lee Malvo are now at Montgomery Correctional Facility. Muhammad has already been sentenced to death for a shooting in Manassas and Malvo has been sentenced to life in prison for the shooting in Falls Church. Maryland prosecuters want to try the two for all six Montgomery County deaths at once, and they plan to do so in case the Virginia convictions are overturned for some reason. After the trial, Malvo and Muhammad will go back to Virginia.

He’s currently sitting over on E. Columbia Street, selling lemonade. I’ll bet he’s getting a lot of money from thirsty Metro riders walking home from work. Sell on, little kid. Sell on.

Gus from the sixth season of The Amazing Race is doing radio ads for Bowie Honda. He should be doing beer commercials instead, since he’s known for trying to stall during a leg at a German beerhaus so he could indulge. I don’t know what his daughter Hera is doing, either. Shouldn’t we know more about local celebs?

Yesterday I returned from that classic DC summer ritual, the long weekend at the beach. Congratulating myself for the foresight of taking today off to clean in preparation for a mid-week house guest, I set out to battle against acres of dust, piles of dirty laundry, stale air, and the usual minefield of cat hairballs.

Several hours later, sweaty and frustrated, I’m still at it.

When you have an old house, cleaning eventually vanquishes you. You endlessly run up and down stairs with buckets of cleaner, finding all the little presents your cats left you. Somehow even more dust descends the second you turn off the vacuum. So I find myself thinking of the first owner, Mrs. Campbell (we found her calling card once in the space behind the pocket doors), and how the hell she must have managed.

If I complain about cleaning the house, scampering about in a little sundress and sneakers, how did she do it in 1890′s full regalia – underdress, corset, petticoats, wool dress, laced up boots, long hair (real and false) piled high? And there was even more dust in those days – our house was at one time equipped with a “modern” coal system venting hot air into the rooms, leaving a nice film of soot to clean every day. Wool carpets, heavy draperies, all the tchotchkes of Victorian life – it’s a wonder those people could breathe!

All the moaning we do about how hot it is, and we have the luxury of CAC to escape to!

Were they all just tougher than we are today?

Now here’s a question I have for you. Who do you tip and when? In reading the comments to my post on Who reads the Washington Times?, Vintagecoils wrote in to say that as a newspaper deliver agent, he was tipped differently by Wash Post and Wash Times readers. That makes me wonder how much you tip folks like him, or the trashman, or the mailman, or taxi drivers, etc?

I totally get tipping servers, as a waiter myself for many years, the $2.25 you get per hour is a joke and if you are a good and consistent tipper, I’ll be jack-quick attentive when you come it. But a newspaper delivery agent? Or the trashman, mailman, etc? They get a decent hourly wage already, right?

And what about taxi drivers? I usually round up, for I hate change, but some folks tip taxis $2-5 per ride. Me, unless they are the last decent cabbie in DC, I say they’re already overpaid for a six-block ride. What about the hotel concierge who whistles for a cab? I would rather do that myself, thank you very much. In this town, those hotel lurking taxis are usually overcharging psycho taxi drivers.

Hairstylists are confusing, for they are providing a direct service and you wanna be sure they cut just enough and not shave ya, but they get a percentage of every charge and hourly to boot. Do you tip them based on cost or time or how many folks involved? I go to one where sometimes she washes my hair & sometimes her assistant does. Should I tip different if it’s two not one?

Is there anyone else to tip I am leaving out?

Dear Guy in the Blue Coupe at the Glebe Rd. Harris Teeter this afternoon:

If you’re waiting for a parking space, perhaps you could, like, wait near the parking space you intend to take, instead of parking over by the curb in front of a parked minivan where no one can see you. Maybe then people would notice that you’re waiting for it.

Instead, in a fit of impotent rage at my indifference to your self-created predicament, you screamed a phrase that was clearly calculated to anger me, but only entertained me. After all, there you were, seething in your car, still circling the lot, as I was on my way into the store. Clearly, I win.

Love and Kisses,
Tiff

PS: I may be a “fat c*nt,” but you’re not exactly a prize package yourself, you scrawny jackass.

So while you’re planning on lazing in bed Sunday morning, probably reading the Wash Post, unless your one of those odd Wash Times folks, I’d like to point out two things you should be doing.

If you’re the active sort, you should be at the DC Tri Club’s Training Triathlon #5 at Haines Point. Starting at 7am, this swim, bike, run will be great practice if you