Wayan’s DC Photos

Check out how the Botanical Gardens interperts the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in plant life.

As part of its Christmas display, they have recreated all the major DC landmarks with twigs, moss, and other bits of green.

And now with winter upon us, the Botanical Gardens are one of the few places to enjoy unadulterated green too.

I refuse the Express when I get on the Metro, primarily because I already get the print edition and don’t care to read stories twice. However I will give them credit – they do their best to mix it up by shortening articles, adding graphics, and now, completely altering the meaning of entire articles.

Today’s has a headline of “Justices OK Crack Leniency” over their article about the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on Kimbrough v. U.S. and Gall v. U.S. The – dare I say it – real newspaper gets it right, with a headline of “Justices Reinforce Leeway on Sentences” and a sub-header that clarifies: “Cocaine Disparity At Heart of 1 Case.” And in writing that headline they show all the ways Express gets it wrong.

The case arose because of strict guidelines for sentencing in drug cases that revolved around how much of the drug there was by weight. Or rather, how much substance there is in a little baggie, by weight. Because crack has a bunch of filler in it people were doing longer terms for amounts of drug that were about the same quantity of high. So some judges and areas balked and complained, hey, we’re already putting these people away for five times as long as we would be doing if they just got a job as a bus driver and ran over two women- why make it even longer because they smoke it instead of snort it?

Okay, maybe they didn’t ask it that way even if they should have.

So Express has used the word “leniency” when the underlying issue was one of equality. I guess you could defend the word choice – I’m sure they’d write a headline about how a mom contemplated beating her kid with a bat but decided for “a more lenient” spanking instead, yes? Their word choice also overlooks the fact that this is about the legality of enforcing sentencing guidelines upon judges – something that goes beyond crack or even drugs in general. Those guidelines could be about gun crimes, shoplifting, or darned near anything.

If you’re going to claim by publishing Express that it’s possible to say something useful in less space, you need to actually do it, WaPo.

Wayan’s WMATA Photos

Have you ever seen Metrorail tunnel graffiti? Neither had I until my Blue Line train stopped in the tunnel between the Arlington Cemetery and Rosslyn stations.

That’s when I looked out the train car window and noticed all this writing on the blacken walls of the tunnel. And it wasn’t just a few random scribblings.

From the length of the graffiti extending the length of the rail car, I would assume that taggers have marked up that WMATA tunnel from the opening to the station – an amazing feat of pluck and vandalism.

Sadly, the underground artists were not of bOrf quality. In fact, they are rather primitive in their art.

photo courtesy of GiraMondo

Yes, a LOLCat reference. Sue me.

There’s still tickets for sale for GiraMondo’s tasting event tomorrow evening, Champagne and Other Bubbles. Back in July I went to an all-champagne tasting and had a good time. Tomorrow’s evening is not just French offerings – as champagne by definition is – but some sparkling wines from Italy, Spain and the US.

During our event the organizer and presenter, Laurent Guinand, brought up a champagne expert who I am afraid my notes do not identify. Tomorrow’s event will include Claude Thibaut, a Virginia-based champagne expert now working on projects at Veritas Vinyards near Charlottesville. I can’t say for sure if it’s the same fellow but I enjoyed the presentation from the fellow at our event. I feel confident that Guinand has lined up a similarly deft speaker if he’s a different one.

So if you’re as fond of the bubbly as I am and looking to spoil yourself slightly, I do recommend the event.

And who is this familiar face singing us up at the DC Democratic State Committee holiday party? Why, it’s none other than Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry, gracing us with his Karaoke prowess at The 18th Amendement! Note that as he croons, he grips two microphones with one hand. Yup, Marion is just so awesome that he comes to you in full stereo sound. Reports from the front say that he’s a pretty good singer. Keith Ivey has more photos, including Ward 7 councilmember Yvette Alexander doing what may be the hustle, and Shadow Senator ex-candidate Phil Pannell singing in a Santa hat.

I grew up in Central Valley of California, much like John McCrea. When Cake was writing songs rich with sarcasm and the vibraslap, I was going to High School just across the causeway from them. For various reasons, most of which had to do with being afraid to see one of my favorite bands (something I’ve conquered twice this year, going to see The Killers and The Wallflowers) in concert, for fear that they wouldn’t live up to my expectations, I hadn’t ever seen them live in concert.

I now wish I hadn’t gone.

I could still enjoy their rapier wit and rockin’ guitar.

However, John McCrea stole that from the audience tonight, frequently pausing to sarcastically lecture the crowd that had paid close to $50 apiece to listen to him sing. We got the sarcastic holier than thou routine about how only 35% of the world has running water. We got the dripping with venom speech in the encore how if we only thought more about the paralyzed war veterans coming home from Iraq, we’d outlaw war. We got the “we’ve seized the means of production, now we’ll be crushed!” speech about how they’ve separated from their major label.

It was too much to fucking bear. I’m not overtly political in my day to day life, but it’s not like I don’t keep up. Cake is not Slayer, folks, nor are they Hootie and the Blowfish. And here in DC, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who works in the political sphere, and by lecturing them from the stage tonight, John, you brought people back into work. Thanks, asshole. I didn’t need to pay for that, did I?

Especially not to someone who sells their morals with their pendant keychains.

Recognize that you’re a frivolity of a well-to-do world, an entertainment option for the erudite and educated, who likely give more to charity than they do to musicians.

Shut the fuck up and play guitar, John. That’s all I want.

First up, two (auxiliary?) officers directing traffic… in concert with a perfectly working streetlight. So as the light changed, so did their whistle-blowing and hand waving. Useful somehow, I am sure. Or so I am telling myself, so I do not believe that I tolerated six hours of shrill whistle-blowing for nothing.

Next up, several of the boys in blue camped out chewing the fat next to the Holiday Market on F just off 7th street. There were actually another 4 uniformed officers in the immediate area, though they actually walked around a bit. Also there were no less than 14 people in the yellow POLICE vests – I presume they were police auxiliary, as they were not armed. Somehow those 20 plus people managed to keep the 300 by 30 foot stretch safe without additional reinforcements.

They also managed to do a good job of impeding the ability of the fire truck to come by on their way between the 6th street station and wherever they were going. With one lane blocked off for the market and the other blocked by the parked police car and van, they didn’t get there fast, but eventually one of the auxiliary managed to wave some of the cars in the oncoming lanes over to the side so the engine could get by. Thankfully it’s not like a minute or two of delay could do more than kill a few folks and burn down someone’s home.

Last up, more of the auxiliary cops. They were doing a good job processing oxygen into carbon dioxide, I’m not sure what else they were accomplishing.

Andy Carvin, DC’s number one social media/web/new media genius, also known as Big Daddy to those who are in the inner circle, shares his recipe for matzo ball soup. Check it out and learn the Carvin family secret to light, fluffy matzo balls. My recipe is similar, except without the salt and pepper – I let my diners season to taste, unless it’s just me at the table. Also the schmaltz. We don’t use the schmaltz, us vegetarians, although we know deep down that we are missing out on the real spice of life.

To my fellow goyim readers, give this delicacy a try and let us know what you think. And to those of you who are seasoned pros at making this soup, what’s your secret ingredient or technique that makes it uniquely yours?

The First Friday Collective (which describes itself as “a bunch of Washington D.C. conservatives and libertarians getting together at a local bar once a month to catch up, meet new people, network, bitch about stuff, laugh at each other, and gloat over softball conquests”) posted the best holiday-party list you need this season: a rather extensive list of parties thrown by trade associations, companies, and other interests.

Maybe you would like to party with and, presumably, slurp up the open bar of, AstraZeneca (at the Willard), the CTIA (Natural History Museum), or the American Farm Bureau (Capitol Hill Holiday Inn)? Now you now when – and where to email your RSVP.

[thanks to the always-fabulous BYT for the intel!]

image courtesy of Esteban

When my brother and his significant other were here for Thanksgiving, my darling girlfriend and I took them to Amsterdam Falafel, which we love to death. I don’t know how the subject came up, but we were talking about DC’s lack of representation in Congress and giving my brother a crash course in the facts and our opinions on the matter. I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman who clearly was interested in our conversation but politely not interjecting herself into it. Kudos to you, ma’am – minding your own business in a dining area as small as Amsterdam Falafel’s is an exercise in restraint that many people aren’t up to, particularly on such a heated issue.

On her way out she stopped and commented that getting a vote doesn’t require a lot of constitutional machinations (one of the areas we touched on) – you just need to make DC a state. While I think that glosses over the extent of the exercise, at this point I doubled the number of invisible Don respect points (save them and redeem them for not so valuable prizes!) since she was not only interested as a DC resident, but was even wearing a cap with the web address for one of the advocacy organizations. We chatted for a few seconds and she was on her way.

This isn’t really that interesting, except that I found myself wondering this morning which organization it was. So I googled “DC statehood” to see which ones make mention. I suspect it was dcvote.org since I recall it being a brief name, but I kept scrolling down the list. Where I did find another not-quite-as-short name but one that seems to advocate for DC becoming a state. For elaboration, here’s the short descriptive paragraph Google shows next to the link.

Camping Tents. COMPANY NAME REDACTED offering a products for inside and outside the home including patio heaters, turkey fryers and camping tents.

Yep, some organization has registered a domain name that references voting rights for the over half a million people living in our nation’s capital… and they’re camping on it to sell camping gear. The douchenozzles in question are a Tennessee company named EleetDealzebub (satirized and not linked because I don’t want to give them even an iota of a Google rank bump) and they don’t have a single mention of ‘statehood’ on their site – they’re just parasites hanging out near our misfortune attempting to profit from it.

Jerks.