A Portable Snack

Surving on One Income in DC

2009-02-20T15:01:00.000+01:00

Coworkers have asked me how we do it: how can my wife and I live in DC with a kid on just my salary and afford to do things like go on vacation or buy clothes or not starve to death?

The answer: I have no idea. And it kind of scares me! I mean, it seems to be working out just fine for us, but what if we’re doing something horribly wrong and just don’t know it? What if I wake up one day and find out we’re bankrupt? Or under investigation by the SEC? Or that my bank sold my mortgage to a loan shark, and he’s coming over with a crow bar? (I can also, somehow, afford many bottles of wine, so that helps to take the edge off such anxiety.)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that my coworkers are right. We’re like bumble-bees: aerodynamically, bumble bees should not be able to fly, but they do. Fiscally, we shouldn’t be able to go to Munich on vacation, but we are.

I have to admit, first and foremost, that we are extremely lucky. My wife and I and my baby are healthy. I have a good, stable government job – higher-level professional, non-management. So I make good money, although not great money by DC standards. And my wife is a fantastic shopper. She knows how to get deals on everything, and always does. We come from terrific families and don’t have any destructive habits.

But luck only goes so far. We’ve also made good decisions. I’ve worked hard, gotten a good education, and paid my dues, working my way up to my current position. We have one used (but very nice) 17 year old car that has no note on it. Since we live in the city, we seldom drive, and even when we do, it’ll only be a few miles round trip. So we save on gas and wear and tear. We own a condo under a 1000 square feet in a big old building – so our energy costs are low and our mortgage is manageable. (We chose not to be taken by the mortgage companies with their interest-only loans and ARM scams.)

Since our place is small, we don’t have room for a lot of stuff. Plus, we’re not that interested in buying a lot of stuff, anyway: no computerized gaming systems (waste of time and money), we don’t buy CDs or DVDs or blueray or satellite radio or ipods or iphones or blackberries or GPSs for the car (I can read a map for God’s sake) or stereo equipment (all wastes of time and/or money; besides, that’s what u-tube, Pandora, and netflix are for), no exercise equipment that would just gather dust, no espresso machines (our little Bialetti knock-off does just fine) or other silly kitchen devices (my wife doesn’t need nor want them, and she’s still a fantastic cook.

We just don’t buy a lot of stuff, including clothes and shoes (although my wife would like to revisit that last one). And we don’t have cable (I don’t even know where to begin to express what a waste of time and money cable is!).

We spend our discretionary income (and there’s not that much of it) on books, netflix, good food at the grocery store, and eating out. We go to the endless free events and museums this city has to offer. And we save up to go on fabulous trips to places like Rome and Krakow and the Everglades and San Francisco and Munich.

When we do buy anything, we do a lot of research, plan for it, and get the best we can get (like our digital camera, our All-Clad, this Mac, all the baby stuff) and almost always at a discount, thanks to my wife’s extraordinary shopping skills.

But even after this analysis, it still scares me. However, I’ve personally been living fat, dumb, and happy for so long, never knowing that I don’t make enough, that I’ll probably continue to do that until the day I die. Not such a bad life, really. (Of course, my next post might be about how we’ve suddenly plunged into fiscal chaos. Stay tuned!)

Imagining Raising Kids in DC

2009-02-18T01:37:00.000+01:00

Lately, I’ve noticed various bloggers and commenters writing how they can’t imagine raising a child in DC. This opinion is not extraordinary. When people say this, I believe them. They are really actually admiting that they have no imagination. The only thing they can envision is raising kids in the exact same milieu as they were raised – most likely a suburban or exurban milieu. They have fond memories of wonderful childhoods, and assume that wonderful childhoods are the direct result of the physical places they lived. I propose that a wonderful childhood is a direct result of having a wonderful family and has little to do with place.

I grew up in a typical suburb, just like the vast majority of white people my age. I had a great childhood. I had woods to play in, places to ride my bike, and ball fields close by. My friend had a pool. We kids ran around the neighborhood unsupervised all day. It was great! (Of course, if I had an ugly family life, I probably wouldn’t have such fond memories.)

Generations of Americans believe that this suburban existence is what made their childhood happy, and therefore it is what will make their own children happy. They believe that life in the city would deprive their children of these basic childhood experiences. I see it differently.

As a child, I wanted for nothing. Or so I thought. But that’s because I didn’t think twice about having to rely on my parents for a ride everywhere I wanted to go: the mall, the movies, a pizza shop, a friends house. It didn’t bother me that we weren’t allowed to ride our bicycles to the shopping center, nor were we allowed to walk along or across the busy roads. At the time, I wasn’t aware that this was an impediment. It was simply a given. Same thing goes for rarely visiting a museum or going to a concert or a lecture or the zoo, all of which were amply available downtown, but required too much time, too much driving, too much money, to do more than a few times a year. Again, that’s just the way it was. Not knowing that a different life style existed, I didn’t feel deprived at all.

A child growing up in the city won’t know that they are being deprived of the ability to ride their bikes down the street and run around for hours unsupervised. What my child will know is this: his mom and dad took him to a pool (either the public pool or a hotel pool or a Y pool or the JCC pool) all the time; his mom and dad played with him in parks they walked to; his mom and dad taught him how to ride a bike in the same parks; when he is older, his mom and dad let him ride the metro and go to coffee shops/movies/shopping with his friends: no need for a ride from mom or dad, either. On top of that, he’ll remember going to the museums all the time (both the free ones and the ones you have to pay for) as well as the zoo, concerts of all kinds, and even talks and readings as he gets older. Plus, he won’t have to sit in a car seat for hours a day.

Perhaps even more important, he’ll be in daily contact with people who don’t look like him, who speak different languages, practice different religions, and make different amounts of money (or no money at all). At five months, he’s already made friends with the staff of a local Eritrean eatery. This interaction is good: he’ll learn about the diversity of the world and how to negotiate his way through it.

And besides, our little guy won’t miss what he doesn’t know about. I firmly believe that the benefits of living in DC far outweigh riding a bicycle down the middle of the street or running around unsupervised all day. Our little guy will have a far more enriched environment here in the city than if we lived in the suburbs.

I find the attitudes of young couples who simply cannot imagine raising a child in the city troubling for a two reasons.

First, where you live impacts the environment. Deciding that you can’t raise your kids in the city, based on the erroneous belief in what makes a happy childhood, merely creates another family living a wasteful suburban existence in a big house on a big lot; another family with two cars (probably SUVs, because they need them); another family that takes a car for every single trip it makes.

Second, this chasing after the perfect childhood is actually depriving their children of so much that the city has to offer – the diversity, the learning opportunities, the simple exercise of walking, and time with their parents. I spend time with him every day instead of sitting in hours of traffic.

We each value different things. I try not to judge others by what they value, but it is human nature to do so. So I do judge people who publicly state that they can’t imagine raising a child in DC. But I don’t judge them too harshly – these are caring people who want to create nice childhoods for their kids, and they will, but not because of where they live. They will provide their kids with nice childhoods because they are good people.

A DC Native

2009-02-02T23:40:00.006+01:00

I had this ridiculous idea, that I'm part of something important, a growing number of young married people who are deciding to stay in the city once they have kids. (There are now 3 babies in our building, including our own!)

It seemed so radical, almost counter-culture. When we got married a few years ago, one of the first questions many people asked us was when we were buying a house in the suburbs. And it wasn't really a question, so much as a statement, as in "wait until you buy your first house out in Virginia". After the First Lord of the Admiralty (that's him up there) was born a few months ago, I was expecting the same questions. But, apparently, it is no longer a given that everyone who has a baby will move out of DC. People either didn't wonder about it at all, or they phrase it as a question, as in "do you think you might possibly move out of DC?" as opposed to "when you move out of the city."

Either way, I felt like I was on the leading edge of something.

But then I got to thinking. And noticing. There are tens of thousands of children being raised in DC. Always have been. The difference is, they aren't white, their families don't make six figures (well, some do), and they aren't expected to leave. They've been here for generations, and they like it just fine. When it comes down to it, I'm kind of like Columbus discovering the Indian's back yard - nothing new here. I'm not doing anything particularly interesting.

Unless, of course, you (that being the "rhetorical" you, because I don't know the actual "you") are a racist. Because there is always that undertone of racism in the questions and/or statements about when we are moving out of DC.

But I'll let that go, because I've learned not to worry about other people's issues.

Raising a child in a city is different from raising a child in, say, suburban Pittsburgh where I grew up. I thought it might be interesting to document that here. I don't know if it will be, but over the next few months, I'll give it a shot. Why not? The First Lord of the Admiralty demands it!

First thing: he will be a native of Washington, DC, not a transplant like 90% of the people I know. He belongs here more than I do. He will think nothing of funny names like "Foggy Bottom" or "Adams Morgan". U Street will be his home. He'll be comfortable with sirens and buses and riding metro and foreign accents and languages. He'll find it strange that some people get into a car every time they need to go to the store. Ethiopia won't be a complete blank to him, as it was to me during the years of "We Are the World." The National Mall will just be another park to him. He won't understand why, in some place, you have to pay to see art. And those neighbors over there on the other side of Lafayette Park? He'll never know a time that an African American family "couldn't" live in the White House. That's all kinda cool. At least to a new dad.

Conversations and Connections Writer's Conference

2008-04-06T19:32:00.001+01:00

I spent Saturday in Dupont Circle at the Conversations and Connections Writer’s Conference. I can’t praise this even enough.

I’m not much on writing classes or workshops. I’ve attended them and I’ve taught them. But what I always come back to is that you can learn to write, but you can’t be taught to write. While this may seem like an oxymoron, I think experience will bear this out as a truth. You learn to write by writing. A lot. Sure, you need someone to show you how to write sentences, how a dictionary works, what the different verb forms are. But once you’ve got the rudimentaries down, after that it’s all milage.

The keynote speaker was Mary Gaitskill, the National Book Award nominated (and National Book Critic’s Circle Award nominated and PEN/Faulkner nominated) author. She said something along these same lines. She talked about “craft,” a term bandied about by critics and writing teachers, and how “craft” has very little to do with good writing. Because good writing is “art.” We discuss “craft” because it is something we can get our arms around. We can analyze it, explicate it, and talk about it in a relatively concrete way. But it’s hard to talk about “art.” It’s more mysterious. But it is what makes the difference between a great novel and a mediocre one.

I’m not convinced there is any such thing as craft in writing. What, exactly do we mean by “craft?” Whether you say “he said” or “he uttered” or “he exclaimed” (or even “exclaimed Bill”) after a line of dialogue? Is this “craft?” Is the plotting of a story “craft?” (If so, then it’s not a very exacting kind of “craft,” like turning a table leg or mixing mortar the right way so it holds the tessera correctly; there are so many ways to write a story, who can say which is the right way? And very often, a new, innovative way that had never been taught, never even thought of before (Faulkner? Joyce?), is often held up as great art.) So what, exactly, do we mean by “craft?” Maybe how hard you hit the keys with your fingers? How many words-per-minute you type?

Setting my misgivings about writing workshops in general aside, I attended this conference with an open mind. I was rewarded with some great sessions about the business of publishing fiction and poetry, writing a novel, and web publishing. I found these discussions encouraging. The novel session in particular: it was like therapy. I got to hear published novelists talk about the ups and downs of writing a novel, their own set backs, challenges, habits, and strategies very much mirroring my own. It let me know that I haven’t quite gone ‘round the bend just yet, that I’m still in there moving ahead in the right direction.

Some of the participants included Rachel Adams, the editor of Lines and Stars, who published my story A Day Like Any Other in the magazine’s inaugural issue last year. Also in attendance were the folks from Potomac Review, No Tell Motel, Gettysburg Review, and Failbetter.
The best thing about this conference was the bang for the buck. It was for real writers; what struggling writer can actually afford the hundreds (even thousands) of dollars to attend many of the writer’s conferences that have proliferated over the past decade? Conversations and Connects was $45, and it included a free book, a subscription to a literary magazine of your choice (I chose The Gettysburg Review), and a “speed date” with a literary editor. I hope they hold this conference again next year.

A final note: the reason I haven’t kept up my blogging is directly related: I’m about 100 pages into writing a new novel, which sucks up my creative energy more than I thought it would.

Yeah, I'm Pro-Development

2007-12-10T23:09:00.001+01:00

But not just any development.

I’m pro-dense, urban, well-designed, well built development.

I’m against crappy development, like the strip mall at W and 14th which, thankfully, now has construction fences around it.

To create good development, you need government oversight in the way of zoning and building codes, and you need community involvement. Constructive community involvement. The community needs to support good development and oppose bad development. The problem is, of course, that people have different definitions of what those things are. For instance, as I stated in my last post, the Dupont Conservancy is opposed to the proposed development at 14th and U, but where were they when that horrible strip mall was built a few blocks away? Perhaps they didn’t exist then, but that’s the kind of development that needs to be opposed.

There are other great things happening in that part of the neighborhood.
Along with the fence around the strip mall, there are two other big
projects underway. And they just took down the scaffolding in the most
well constructed building ever built on the NE corner of 14th and U. I
say that because they’ve been working on it for about 15 months, and
it’s a small three story building, so it better be the best building in
the history of the world! I’m not sure what’s going to go in there, but
right next door is the new Marvin. We’ve only been there for a drink,
but it looks fantastic and I have a feeling that the food is good.

Further up 14th is the new Union Row where a Yes! Market will soon open.
The silly European style alley they built through the middle of the
building is actually quite nice! I hope that building fills up. If
they build something of that quality at 14th and U, who could have any
concerns?

Thanks to all who read and commented on my last posting about the
project at 14th and U. Surprisingly, all the feed back I received was
positive. I figured there would be someone who disagreed with me.

14th and U Street Controversy

2007-11-28T18:34:00.000+01:00

A developer has proposed a ten story apartment and retail building for the southwest corner of U and 14th Streets, where the McDonalds now is. The proposal is to get rid of the bad one story development along 14th Street and incorporated the historically contributing structures into the design of the new building. This, of course, has brought out all kinds of opposition from various community group, including, for some reason, the Dupont Circle Conservancy and the Dupont Circle ANC, even though 14th and U is NOT in Dupont Circle.

But that’s OK, because in this great city of ours, anyone and everyone can throw their two cents into any issue at any time. Since I live two blocks from 14th and U and walk past that corner twice a day, I figure I probably have more right than people who live at 22nd and S Streets to comment on it. So here goes.

I support the development. To not support dense in-fill development in the middle of the city is to be both anti-urban and anti-environment.

Anti-urban because dense development, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is good for the economy and good for public safety. Anti-environment, because in a neighborhood that is well served by public transportation (the Metro is one block away), and in a world where global warming is a reality, leaving a huge plot of land like that under-utilized is backward looking. Us urbanites should be leaders in the environmental movement, not NIMBYs.

The arguments against it come down to traffic and “massing,” which is the same as saying “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big.”

The traffic argument doesn’t work because, again, Metro is one block away. Who on earth would move to that building so they could drive to work every day? Plus, I walk past there at rush hour every day, and there ain’t that much traffic there, something the Dupont Circle folks might know if they every actually ventured into my neighborhood.

The “massing” argument is also absurd. To support the “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big” argument (and I quote from The Dupont Current), the Dupont Circle Conservancy said that “unlike the Reeves Center to the north, which was built on a large site, this project is being wedged into an existing historic district with considerable adjacent existing residential areas.” The sheer idiocy of this statement is mind-boggling! First, to hold up the Reeves Center as some sort of model of development is lunacy. The first problem with the Reeves Center is that it doesn’t use all of it’s large site, not to mention that it has such things as huge ventilation systems fronting on U street and empty glass and ugly brutalist architecture, all of which make it relate extremely poorly to the prominent corner on which it is situated and not fit in with the historic structures all around it. Which brings up the second problem with the Conservancy’s statement: the Reeves Center is in the exact same historic district, surrounded by the same residential areas, as the proposed site. In fact, it is right across the street! Their argument is simple nonsense. A 75 to 100 foot building would have the same “massing” as the self-storage building it will abut, as the Reeves Center, and as all the other apartment and condo buildings that have been built along 14th Street.

The devil, of course, is always in the details. The plans have to be good. But since it is in a historic district, and there are zoning specifications it must meet, and a lot of it has to be reviewed by the ANC (the ANC that has actual jurisdiction over the area, not one from across town), the plan will have to be good to pass muster.

In this day and age, with the price of oil climbing to ever higher levels, with the reality of global warming, NIMBY-ism and obstructionism should not be allowed to derail good, dense, urban in-fill development, which I believe this will be.

Shameless Promotion: Les Champs Artists' Cooperative

2007-11-21T01:44:00.000+01:00

I've come out of my blog-dormancy to make a quick anouncement about a new Artists' Cooperative based in DC. Based, in fact, on U Street. Actually, based right here in this building: Les Champs Artists Cooperative.

My beautiful and talented wife is the founder of the cooperative, and they just had their first highly successful show this weekend at the Junior League of Washington's A Capital Collection. They sold a lot of art!

The cooperative is made up of many talented artists who do what I like to call "representational realism". In other words, artists who can actually draw and have a real sense of color and create beautiful, amazing pictures.

Perhaps I'm biased. But check it out!

DC Taxi Zones vs. Meters

2007-10-18T15:15:00.000+01:00

Ah, cab fares! Nothing gets the DC blogosphere a-rockin’ like a good old fashioned bru-ha-ha over cab fares!

Mayor Fenty’s newest decisive decision (he’s nothing if not decisive when he makes a decision) to switch DC’s cabs away from the zone system and to meters has been cheered by most cab riders, and even some cab drivers, but jeered by many cabbies.

Which leads me to believe that perhaps it’s a good thing.

But it’s quite a bit more complicated that it may seem. First of all, all you people out there who complain about the zone system do so for one simple reason: you don’t understand it. If you choose to take a cab for five blocks, you’ll pay the same amount as if you traversed the entire zone. Sucks to be you, but you WERE NOT overcharged. Too bad you’re too lazy to walk those five blocks. There are also extra charges during rush hour, which is why the same ride can sometimes be a couple bucks more or less at different times of day. It’s all written down inside the cab.

Now, I’m not necessarily defending the zone system. On Capitol Hill, we lived one block inside a zone. We quickly learned that if we were going down town, we had to walk a block west to catch a cab. Today, we also live right across a zone boundary line, so we’ve learned to have cabs drop us off at the restaurant across the street instead of in front of our building. But you can’t game the system if you’re from out of town and don’t know the system. Meters will help.

But meters will also hurt. Right now, I know when I get in a cab in DC how much a given ride will cost me, because I can read, both a map and the fare schedule, posted in every cab. It doesn’t matter if we sit in traffic, or it’s rush hour, or if the driver decides to drive around in circles or stop of a cup of coffee; the price will always be the same. With meters, you’ll never know what the cost will be. It will be completely dependent on traffic, and on the route the cabby takes. Cabbies will have no incentive to find the fastest route, like they do right now. If I want to figure out the best way to get from one part of the city to another, I take a cab and see how he goes, because he wants to get there a quickly as possible under the zone system. With meters, he’ll want to get there as slowly as possible.

So if this is the case, why aren’t cabbies supporting the meters? Two reasons: first, I bet they make a lot of money downtown or in Adams Morgan/Dupont Circle from lazy people who don’t want to walk a few blocks. Second, they’ve already figured out how to cheat in the present system, and they’ve yet to figure out how to cheat with meters. The devil you know if always better than the devil you don’t.

When it comes right down to it, as cab riders, things won’t change very much. Maybe the lazy people will pay less to go 5 blocks. But the rest of us will still have to be vigilant. However, instead of being vigilant about zones and surcharges and fare prices, we’ll have to know if a cabbie is taking us for a ride to run up the meter, and then have the guts to tell him.

My Wife is NOT Homeless

2007-10-16T16:38:00.000+01:00

Contrary to word on the street, I work very hard to ensure that my wife remains housed. We found out about her street rep just recently. She was walking down U Street, carrying various attributes of her profession (paint box, palette, etc.), wearing paint spattered clothes, weaving her way through the crowds around Local 16 and Stetsons, when she happened by a homeless man. He was about to ask her for money, when he changed his mind and apologized. Then, reaching deep into a grimy pocket, he took out a couple dimes and actually offered them to her.

My wife had a hard time explaining to him that she didn’t need the money. Telling him she always dressed that way was not convincing, for he always dressed that way, too. She said she’s an artist, and he said, yeah, he is too. I’m just coming from doing work, she protested. I’m sure this guy is used to seeing people dressed in non-filthy clothes coming from work, so he was rightfully skeptical. Finally, he understood. Perhaps it was her perfume.

She told me what happened as soon as she came in. I laughed.

I wish there were a better ending to this story. I wish I could say that we rushed back out there and bought him dinner or at least gave him some money. But, instead, we sat down and ate our food and drank our wine while he continued to rattle his coin cup at the bus stop.

Quoting Quatable Quoting Coworker's Quotes

2007-10-15T16:43:00.000+01:00

For some reason, I get really annoyed when people quote lines from movies. It bugs me even more when they don’t mention that they are quoting a movie and try to pass off the quip as their own.

For instance, recently someone at work said to me: “I’ve learned two things in my life: there is a God, and it ain’t me.” This is from Rudy, the movie where a Hobbit plays football for Notre Dame. It is said by priest to Rudy, who is having some sort of shortness-related existential crisis.

I don’t remember what we were talking about when this line was trotted out. I can’t possibly imagine how it could have come up; I usually confine my wine-soaked eschatological concerns and theological misapprehensions to the bonds of holy matrimony, much to the persistent irritation of my poor wife. It is quite out of character for me to have spoken so freely about the God-head at work so as to cause someone to quote Rudy to me. I assure you, the coworker was not a priest and I was not seeking spiritual guidance. Perhaps I was asking about the finer points of substituting “Court Leave” for “Annual Leave”, but there was decidedly no supplication involved. What ever the particular circumstances were, it is always inappropriate to quote movies and pretend that you’re not.

I’ve also had coworkers say things like “go ahead, make my day” when I definitely wasn’t lying on the ground with a .357 pointed at my face, “play it again, Sam” when I was no where near North Africa, and “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” I don’t even know where to begin to describe the contextual wrongness of that statement. In each of these cases, I stated, with a half-hearted laugh, that I had seen that movie, too, leading to my coworker simply walking away.

This is a disturbing trend, to say the least.

The only media that it is okay to quote without attribution is any line from The Simpsons. There seems to be a Simpsons' quote suitable for every situation. If the person you are talking to doesn’t get it, it is, in fact, inappropriate (and a waste of time) to say something like “you know, Homer? When he was on the hammock? In the back yard? With the beer? And the dog?” Quoting The Simpsons is like flashing a membership card for a secret club, a goofy, nerdy, pathetic (in a “I laugh at Pablo Naruda jokes” kind of way), club. (We do have reciprical memberships with the Monte Python Quoters Club, by the way.)

If you’re good at quoting The Simpsons, then it’s kind of like being king of the dip-shits. That’s kind of cool. (Attribution needed.)

The Mugging of City Neighborhoods

2007-10-12T00:47:00.000+01:00

Madame M's post on DCBlogs, Muggin About (http://dcblogs.com/?p=625), hit a chord with me. I've been thinking about these very things a lot lately.

I think we're on the same Yahoo Group list serve. And while I've never been mugged, either, (although assaulted, yes), I have to agree with her. The common threads on the list serve: too much crime, and how to keep out new development (i.e., condos on 15th St. SE, taverns on PA Avenue SE).

Are these two issues related?

Jane Jacobs, the patron saint of all urban souls, would say yes: busy streets are safe streets. How do you make busy streets? 1. More density (i.e., more than 50 units per acre, which is what a row-house neighborhood averages) and 2. mixed uses, as in stores, cafes, print shops, offices, schools, churches, clubs, and yes, bars.

An urban neighborhood is not a suburban neighborhood and shouldn't be treated as such. A cut-off suburban neighborhood of single family homes can afford to have no commercial development because no one can get to it very easily. A city neighborhood, wedged in between other city neighborhoods, with mixes of socio-economic classes, races, cultures, and easily accessable by foot, metro, car, bus, taxi, bicycle, etc, can't afford to NOT have commercial development.

All the scariest, most unsafe areas of DC are residential neighborhoods. The lower the density, the less safe they are: east of the river, the density is lower than around RFK, there is no decent commercial development, and the crime rate is much higher. (I don't include upper-NW, which, for all intents and purposes, is suburban.)

These things are all related. My neighborhood (U Street, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant) has much the same demographic as East Capitol Hill, but is INFINITELY safer. The reason: 150 - 250 housing units per acre and tons of mixed use development.

If you don't want to have any commercial development around you, and you want to live in a house, you have two choices: live in the suburbs, or live in an unsafe city neighborhood. There are lots of quiet streets full of beautiful rowhouses in my neighborhood, but they are all within a block of the businesses on U and 17th and 18th and Florida and 14th and P and Q and R, etc., probably too close for the complainers on the Yahoo Groups list serve.

To be safer, areas like Capitol Hill East need more density and more commercial development. 15th Street SE between East Capitol and PA Ave used to have lots of businesses. Most have been turned into housing or remain boarded up. 14th Street also had businesses, most of which are gone. Neighbors should show up at ANC meetings and encourage development, not try to stop it. Worrying about the historic architectural character of a neighborhood when people are scared to walk outside to enjoy that historic character is ludicrous.

I moved from Hill East about a year and half ago partly because I realized that the anti-development attitude and the NIMBYism expressed on the list serve meant many long years of stagnation and of crime. And boredom. However, I didn't move, strangely enough, because of the crime.

What City Do You People Live In?

2007-09-26T20:10:00.000+01:00

I like dcblogs new little brain tickler at the top of the page each day. Nice addition!

So I’ll devote this posting to a response to DC’s not quite an urban paradise yet, but we’re getting there.

My response is to the original post(s) at American Prospect by Ezra Klein and the comments specific to DC.

My first response: what city do you people live in? Cause it ain’t MY city.

The amount of mis-information floating around in the original posts and the comments is astounding, such as:

"...a plurality of [DC's] population is well educated and in many ways upper middle class, while far more of its population is poor and not well educated..."

Huh?

(First, I think the word “plurality” is misused: you’re either well educated, or you’re not.)

Some facts: DC Poverty Rate: 18.3%; Percentage of DC residents with a BA or higher: 39.1%
(From the U.S. Census) Please don’t comment that 18.3% is high. It is, but it is not a majority. And 39.1% is also high. Extremely.

DC has a bad rap as being a poor, crime-ridden place. There, of course, is a racial overtone to that bad rap, since DC is 57% black. But the statistics don’t back up the rap.

The black middle class in DC is HUGE, but they live in places few white people have ever heard of, because nothing ever happens there to make it onto the evening news and they don’t have any trendy night spots: Riggs Park, Michigan Park, Brightwood, Hillcrest, Fort Dupont, Fort Totten, etc. (Also in places you’ve heard of, like Capitol Hill and Anacostia and Bloomingdale and Ladroit Park and Shaw.) These people may or may not have college degrees (although many do), but they all have good, stable jobs (either blue or white collar), or own businesses. It’s true that some of these neighborhoods don’t have many “coffee shops,” but neither did McLean, Bethesda, Silver Spring, or Arlington until a decade ago.

The symbolic "coffee shop" comes down to culture: 20 years ago, a coffee shop was a diner. You went there for breakfast and a cup of coffee and sat at the counter. The United States has never had a tradition of cafes, or tea houses, or tea rooms, or hookah bars, or Hamams, or bath houses, or any other kind of "third place" (save neighborhood bars), except in ethnic enclaves, where people brought their old world traditions with them. (And by “old world”, I’m including Asia, the Middle East, and Africa: check out the coffee ceremony at Dukem some time.) To claim coffee shops are white is silly. They are a new phenomenon in most of the U.S., and are slowly spreading everywhere. At most, they are bell-weathers of new prosperity, which says little about race. By the way, Mocha Hut, Love Cafe, and Jolt-n-Bolt are all minority owned businesses. To add to the confusion, many of the new places on U Street (that cater to “Yuppies”) are owned by immigrants, minorities, or, brace yourself, partnerships consisting of whites and minorities together! How does this fit into the rich/poor/race/class/new-comer/old-resident/owner/renter/working class/yuppie calculus that so frustratingly dominates such discussions?

Ezra Klein seems to think that a city government conjures up things like coffee shops (and other amenities that make a city “livable”). While a city government can encourage local businesses in a variety of ways (something I think DC does a poor job of), the “free market” plays the largest role in how a city develops.

Moving on: the idea that DC doesn't have any University ties is also absurd. The city is full of Howard lawyers, doctors, and dentists who stuck around, as well as lawyers, doctors, and dentists (and every other profession you can name) from Georgetown, GW, American, CUA, Trinity, even UDC.

The assertion that DC doesn’t have bookstores or an arts culture is also ignorant. Within walking distance of my place, there are the following bookstores, some new, some old (you know, before all the hated yuppies moved in):
Red Onion Books, Second Story Books, Idle Time Books, Candidas, Books-a-Million, G Books, Kramer Books, Busboys and Poets, Lambda Rising, Howard University Bookstore, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

There is a large and dynamic arts scene is DC. It’s just that it’s filled with people who actually spend their time painting, writing, sculpting, acting, and dancing, and not a bunch of highly visible posers who hang out at cafes NOT painting, writing, sculpting, acting, or dancing, like in other cities. Because to be able to afford to live in this city, you better get off your ass and do some work. Here are some fine examples:

Washington Writer’s Publishing House
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
Mid City Artists
Brett Busang
Anna Demovidova
Agatekartstudio
Solas Nua
Lines and Stars
Burlesque Poetry Hour

And these are just the ones I know about.

Finally, I came to DC to go to grad school, and discovered that it is awesome, and so I found a job here so I could stay. It’s awesome because, unlike Portland and Seattle (overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly boring, overwhelmingly easy to live in (or "livable")), DC is diverse and challenging and stimulating. You’ll find a lot of people like me in DC, at least the DC in which I live.

The Ducks of Jena, Louisiana

2007-09-21T14:52:00.000+01:00

Seeing so many of my fellow Washingtonians wearing black today, I can’t help but feel a little neglectful at not having shown, somehow, my feelings about the Jena 6.

I like to think of myself as open-minded, never leaping to conclusions without knowing all the facts. So in a case like this, I usually would reserve judgment, especially on a whole town, that everyone else is calling racist.

But sometimes, I have to admit, one can simply know things without the benefit of all the facts.

I’m sure the African American kids did some provoking, as teenagers, especially boys, do, and it is obvious that the white teens did some of there own, in no uncertain racist terms. I suppose one could say that everyone in the situation was at fault, that no one had more blame than anyone else. Except, that’s exactly what the local authorities are NOT saying. Why were the African American kids the only ones arrested? I know I don’t have all the facts, but if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

I used to coach youth lacrosse in Northern Virginia. One day, we had Gary Gait (the Michael Jordan of the Lacrosse world) come out to give a clinic to our league. There were probably fifty or sixty kids huddled around him, all of them white, except for one black kid. He was probably 12 or 13, standing towards the back, joking around with his (white) friends. They were making noise, which was inappropriate, and maybe the black kid was making more noise than the others, but he wasn’t the only one. One of the fathers, another volunteer coach, came over and pulled this lone black kid, and only this kid, out of the group, and proceeded to yell at him with that seething, closed-teeth, bulging-eyed style of restrained-yet-not yelling that belied something deeper and more menacing than a simple reprimand for inappropriate adolescent behavior. I don’t remember the exact words he used, but they weren’t racist or off color in any way. But it didn’t matter. Even though I didn’t know a thing about this man, I still knew a duck quacking when I heard one.

A small town in Louisiana, far from the cosmopolitan excesses of places like DC? You’d have to be naive if you didn’t think there were some ducks down there, even some ducks in power.

I was going to write a post about how my neighborhood, from Dupont Circle to U Street to Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, and Mt. Pleasant, was like a snap shot of the American promise: one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country, and one of the most densely populated. African, Middle Eastern, Latino, and Asian immigrants live and work side by side with established African American and white families and new comers of all colors (like me), young and old, gay and straight, well educated and not, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and unaffiliated, and it all works. There are problems, just like anywhere else, but nothing like Jena, Louisiana. Now I don’t know how to write that post, because it seems we are still a long way from that American promise.

I’m just glad I live where I live.

Woodley Park, Whistle-men, and the Revolt of the Street Furniture

2007-09-19T23:20:00.000+01:00

Update: I found two of the wayward mail boxes huddled on the sidewalk on 16th Street near Q, trying to appear inconspicuous. But I knew.

What’s more, I’m pretty certain they were wearing disguises. They seemed to be lower and fatter than your standard variety mail box. They were still blue, but just barely.

I also found another one up near U Street: it thought it could simply camouflage itself with green paint, but it wasn’t fooling anyone.

They may be trying to get away from the guy with the whistle. I’ve seen him in one place so far: outside the Woodley Park/Adams Morgan metro (which isn’t in Adams Morgan, if you haven't noticed). He was sitting on a box, next to a garbage can, mixed in with the other street furniture (you know, Louie Canz lamp posts, pie crust newspaper boxes, drop leaf police call boxes) blowing a whistle. A regular, referee-type whistle. As loud as he could. As long as he could. I could hear him at the bottom of the escalator, and as far away as the middle of the Calvert Street bridge. No one seemed to notice. Perhaps the trauma of the absent mail boxes has numbed the populace.

If he keeps this up, this whistle-man, I’m afraid the garbage cans may decide they’ve had enough as well. And perhaps the lamp posts will stage a Tolkienian Ent-inspired rampage.

That’s all we need.

The Great Mailbox Conspiracy on U Street

2007-09-18T00:28:00.000+01:00

Now that I’m back from my travels, I suddenly realized that something terrible has happened in DC while I was gone: someone has stolen all the mail boxes. Or they all got sick of standing around being blue and just took off.

I had a very important letter to mail (or “screed”, as editors and the judiciary all across the land have called them in their “restraining orders”), and I walked all around the neighborhood, down New Hampshire and up 17th, and down 18th and around U Street, and not a mail box was to be found!

I suspect they are congregating somewhere near the river, perhaps in one of the Potomac Parks, maybe near where The Awakening will soon be torn from the ground, saying their good-byes.

Or maybe they are tired of being Borfed, and are staging a mail-in (or squat-in, or sit-there-in, or whatever mail boxes do) at the USPS headquarters building (it’s that big blue rounded-top building in Southwest that always makes me think of grandma - you know the one).

In any case, there are no mail boxes near Coladams Circle, and my screeds are piling up, and we are in danger of suffocation by screed, necessitating more writing of screeds, with no way of emancipating said screeds. Thus the provenance of this blog entry.

Las Vegas – End of Days

2007-09-13T16:38:00.000+01:00

The apocalyptic title of this entry expresses my feelings about my time in Las Vegas. The problem is, people shouldn’t live there. It’s a desert! It was 106 degrees every day we were there. You can’t live without air conditioning. You can’t go any where unless you drive a car. The city is in a constant state of drought because, well, it’s in a desert!

The town of Las Vegas was originally built at a spring, or maybe a couple of springs. There was enough water for a few people. But they have long since outgrown that meager water supply. So they’ve damned up the Colorado River and created Lake Meade. Every time I’m in Las Vegas, my colleagues always express surprise at how low the water is in Lake Meade. How could they possibly be surprised? Most of the southwestern U.S. uses the Colorado river as their water supply. And more people keep moving in, creating an ever-increasing demand on the same water supply. This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even hydrology or ecology. It’s math!

On the plus side, most of the electricity in Las Vegas comes from Hoover Damn, so at least they aren’t pumping coal emissions into the air. There’s enough smog as it is, as this picture shows.

My wife felt sick when we were on the Strip: head aches, sneezing, common allergy symptoms. She spent her days in Red Rock Canyon while I was at meetings, and felt great there. It had to be the smog. Vegas’s smog problems are simple as well: since people are obliged to drive everywhere, they, well, do. The problem is exacerbated by geography: Vegas is surrounded by mountains, so the smog never blows away. It just sits there like soup in a bowl.

There was one good discovery in Vegas itself: Bouchon, at The Venetian, a bistro owned by Chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry. We didn’t have reservations, but we decided to take a chance. We ate at the bar. The food was fabulous, and the restaurant itself was very nice. A bit kitchy, perhaps, decorated in the “Parisian Bistro” style, but not over the top. It was the best food I’ve had in all my trips to Vegas, except perhaps for a little Mexican place in a suburban strip mall, which I’ll never find again.

After two days of meetings and an early morning visit to Red Rock Canyon, we headed back home. I was sad to leave San Francisco, but thrilled to be out of Vegas and happy to once again be in DC. I always seem to forget just how much I like living here, everything about it: the people, the neighborhoods, our apartment, even the buildings themselves, and the weather. I love to travel, but I’m always glad to get back to DC.

San Francisco Day 4 - Las Vegas

2007-09-10T23:13:00.000+01:00

Our last morning in San Francisco we ate breakfast at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. It was little pricey, but quite good. And the Fairmont is a grand old hotel, full of pretension and columns and molding and mirrors and marble, just terrific! We visited Grace Cathedral, built after the 1906 earth quake.

The church is built out of reinforced concrete. The impressions the forms left, along with the color of the concrete, make it look as if it were built of stone. We found the same thing at the San Francisco Art Institute on Russian Hill, built to look like a Franciscan monastery complete with a (concrete) campinile! It is truly amazing what they did with concrete in the early part of the 20th century, a far cry from the horrible brutal uses of concrete in Washington (such as the HUD building, L’enfant Plaza, and the Third Church of Christ Scientist on 16th Street).

We had one last espresso in North Beach (Cafe Greco) and one last stroll through China Town, and got back on BART.

A short flight back to Vegas and we ended up at the dreaded CONFERENCE HOTEL, one of those newer places on the western outskirts of Las Vegas, in Summerlin, actually. These places (Something Something Station or Somethingelse Coast, etc.) are springing up in residential areas around the valley, with huge parking lots, and are popular with locals and retirees. In fact, they were having some sort of Senior Miss Nevada contest or show that week.

But since I was one of the meeting organizers they upgraded me to a suite, and even with my cynical attitude and disgust at all things fake-glitzy-gambling related, I have to say, it was pretty damn cool! I think it was bigger than our apartment, with great views of the mountains and the Strip, about 10 miles away.

We found a Home Depot so my wife could buy some turpentine, and then bought way too much food at a supermarket (the suite had a kitchen, of course), ate some chicken and Boudin bread we had brought from San Francisco, and then enjoyed the high-roller life style! Actually, that is how we enjoyed the high roller lifestyle.

San Francisco – Day 3

2007-09-07T16:43:00.000+01:00

The day started off overcast and chilly, a perfect day for a museum. A 15 dollar cab ride to Golden Gate Park, through sleepy Sunday morning neighborhoods, and we’re at the de Young Museum just as it opens.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m not much impressed nor interested in modern architecture. Not because I so love old architecture, but because so much of new architecture simply doesn’t work. A building should have an entrance that you can find, it should have a form that doesn’t make you feel creeped out or brutalized, it should have windows to let in light, its interior should be laid out to function well for what it is meant for. And it shouldn’t look like a giant piece of feces. Which are essentially all the problems of the de Young.

Our docent spent quite a bit of time defending the new building, always a tip-off that maybe it ain’t so great. They torn down the old museum, a classically inspired stone structure, because it was “the most seismically unsound building in San Francisco.” After spending however much money it costs to tear down a huge building and cart it all away, they then spend 200 million dollars to build the new museum designed by the “renowned Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects in San Francisco.” I bet they could have spent all that money on Mel’s Concrete Contracting and Seismic Engineering Services, LLC, and made the old museum seismically sound, but how can you brag about that? The new building, for some reason, is covered in copper. Right now, the copper is (feces) brown. Eventually, it will be green, which, the docent assured us, will be better.

As we approached the de Young from the drive, we couldn’t find the entrance. It is tucked back in a triangular court yard reminiscent of a prison exercise yard, although without the symmetry or romance. There are some glass doors back in there that might have been for the cleaning staff. The entrance was not prominent, and there were no signs telling you where the entrance was or when you had actually found it. I suppose that’s part of the experience of the building, a hallmark of “renowned” architecture.

Inside, the building is confusing, and seems to use space extremely inefficiently. The lobby area is vast and empty, but, we were told, the large windows that look out on narrow triangular interior courtyards filled with vegetation (or “weeds”) helped bring the outside inside. (Personally, if I wanted to be outside, I’d go outside. I came inside to be outside of the outside, not inside the outside, and so on.)

The American art collection housed at the de Young is quite nice, and Golden Gate Park that surrounds the museum is very nice. And, actually, the cafeteria serves good food at reasonable prices and is quite pleasant. So I thoroughly enjoyed my half day there, trashing the architecture and looking at the art.

We walked back down towards our hotel through Haight Ashbury. It’s very hard for me not to sound like a crotchety old man when I say things like “why would perfectly healthy young suburban teens and twenty-somethings choose to sit around in dirty clothing begging for money on Haight Street?” Not just one of them. Scores of them, amid the head shops and touristy bars and cafes. I suppose the only plausible explanation is that I’m old and I have a job and I’m a “square.”

A trip back along the edge of the Tenderloin on Market Street, a quick visit to SOMA, and a wonderful dinner at Trattoria Contadina, another Michelin recommendation, rounded out a fun day. Contadina is at Union and Mason Streets, over the hill from our hotel, on the cable car line.

All through dinner, I watched the cable cars go by, timing them, enabling us to dash out just as one came up the hill and hop on. The ride was a bit chilly, but the views were spectacular, especially at night, and we actually used the cable car for real transportation, not just as an amusement ride. It beat the heck out of walking back up Nob Hill. The cable car got stuck at the top of a hill on a flat spot where it makes a left turn. The driver just didn’t time it right and it ran out of mojo (I think that’s what they run on), so he radioed for help. In about a minute, a pickup truck with a big plow on the front showed up and gave us a shove, and gravity did the rest.

Not a bad way to end our last night in San Francisco.

San Francisco, Day 2: Borders Surfing and Sushi

2007-09-06T18:09:00.000+01:00

In our travels, we’ve learned that the cheapest way to find a good meal is to go to a bookstore and peruse their Michelin Red guide. Not buy it, mind you, just borrow it for a few minutes, all the while saying things like “hmmmm, should we buy this? Is this book any good? Hmmmm…”

So when we ventured out again after our nap, we went to the Borders on Union Square and found a Michelin rated Japanese place right across the street from the hotel. At that point, we had probably looked at it 10 times already, but never guessed it was any good.

I didn’t find anything in the red guide for Fisherman’s Warf, so naturally, that’s where we headed, via a circuitous route up Russian Hill and down Lombard Street, where we got to watch a you couple skate board down between the flowers to the amusement of all. We also walked up the “street” that Armistead Maupin used as a model for Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series. It wasn’t so much a street or even lane, as a pathway up a hill through a jungle. Pretty darn cool.

My wife wanted Dungeness crab, but Fisherman’s Wharf was so crowded we couldn’t even get near the out door fish vendors. Plus, we couldn’t figure out the logistics of eating whole crabs while standing up. The wharf was about what we expected, kind of a more gritty version of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. So we walked back up the long hill to Sutter Street and went to our newly discovered Japanese place.

It was the best Japanese food I’ve ever had. They had sake that actually tasted good, unlike what you might get at Benihana or even Blue Fin. We got a sampler, served cold. I’m sure they were serving those bottles you see in the liquor store that cost like $30 for a half liter. But it’s worth buying even at that price!

The sushi and sashimi were excellent. Back at the hotel, we stopped in the pub, decorated in old English pub style with lots of bright work paneling and molding. There were a good many locals there who said it was their neighborhood hang-out. And it wasn’t a neighborhood hang-out a-la The Tune Inn, where men go to get drunk fast. It was more of a Jane Jacob’s style “third place.” We split a Guinness and headed for bed.

The Klan in Manassas

2007-09-06T13:24:00.000+01:00

This morning’s Post ran an article about the KKK distributing leaflets in Manassas.

As a blogger, obviously I’d be a hypocrite if I wanted to curtail the Klan’s right to free speech. They can spew any kind of hate they want to. If no one listens to them, they have no influence. But the problem is that there is a receptive climate to the Klan’s message in places like Manassas and Herndon and all those outer suburbs.

This country does have an immigration problem, if that’s the way you want to phrase it. But we have always had an immigration problem. In San Francisco, I learned that in the 1870s, congress passed laws specifically restricting Chinese immigration. Local jurisdiction, feeling that the Federal government wasn’t going far enough to address all those Chinese people destroying their communities, passed repressive laws stripping them of basic rights, such as property ownership and business licenses, and restricting them from working. Sound familiar?

My mother grew up in Homestead, PA, a mill town just outside of Pittsburgh. She tells me that as late as the 40s and 50s, there were still many different ethnic communities in her town, speaking different languages, who only socialized with themselves. There was the Italian church, the “Hunky” church, the Irish church, the Russian church, the Polish church. Language barriers kept them separated, and the Americans who lived in Homestead (who had only been Americans for a generation or two) didn’t like any of them: the Italians were greasy, the Irish were drunks, the Polish were stupid, and the Hunkys were all those things, plus filthy on top of it all. (Hunkys, for those who don’t know, was a catch-all term for Eastern European: Slovaks, Czechs, Romanian, Ukranian, Hungarian. Not only was it a demeaning term, it wasn’t even accurate!) It’s amazing how similar the language used to describe today’s Latino immigrants is to the language used 50 or 100 years ago to describe other sets of immigrants.

Of course, the children of all these immigrants and Americans intermarried and created, guess what, the white America that now has such a problem with Latino immigrants.

When someone says they don’t have a problem with Latino immigrants, only illegal Latino immigrants, they are making a circular argument bordering on the absurd. Illegal immigrants are illegal because we say they are. We create laws that determine who is illegal and who isn’t. Tomorrow, Congress could pass a law changing the status of all illegal immigrants, and granting work visas to anyone who wanted one. Suddenly, there is no illegal immigration problem. But I doubt that would end the debate. People who the Klan appeals to don’t like Latinos, not illegal Latinos.

Their status as “illegal” has nothing to do with free market economics or the right-wing’s worship of the idea of a free labor market. People come to this country to get jobs. If there were no jobs, they wouldn’t come. Manassas is overwhelmed with Latinos because there are lots of jobs for them in Northern Virginia. Otherwise, why would they be there? Just to annoy Americans?

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know the Klan has nothing constructive to add to it.

San Francisco, Day 2

2007-09-05T16:20:00.000+01:00

The Hotel Beresford is situated on Sutter Street in a burgeoning district of galleries, an art school, art stores, theaters, small restaurants and bars, and other small hotels. The Beresford is an oddity in the United States. It’s a small hotel with small rooms, a tiny lobby, and a pub. The pub serves double duty as the breakfast room each morning, where they serve cereal, pastries, croissants, and fruit, all included in the price of the room. At $99.00, it’s also one of the best values smack dab in the middle of San Francisco.

Apparently, there are a good many of these kinds of hotels in San Francisco: small, comparatively affordable, including breakfast. Very few other American cities have places like this anymore. New York and Boston perhaps. But the small hotels in DC are obscenely expensive “boutique” hotels. Or they are rather seedy places, more flop houses that rent rooms by the hour than tourist hotels. I suspect this phenomenon has something to do with the decline of American cities over the past half century. As the car culture became more prevalent, and the middle class fled cities, people saw fewer and fewer reasons to stay in the city, unless they stayed at a mega-conference hotel. Better to stay at a cheap motel on the out skirts and drive into the city to visit any sites worth seeing. But San Francisco, like New York and Boston, didn’t empty out like other American cities. (For instance, between 1950 and today, DC has lost 250,000 residents, or nearly ¼ of it’s population. Pittsburgh has lost 500,000, or nearly 2/3 of it’s population. San Francisco and Boston have basically held steady, and New York has actually gotten bigger.) The small, affordable city hotels still worked in San Francisco, and so remained.

The second day, we went to Chinatown early in the morning and experienced the crowds of older Chinese women, and some men, doing their shopping. I love Chinatowns and Asian markets. Everything seems so fresh, so natural: live frogs and fish, unknown fruits and vegetables, animated conversations. Blocks and blocks of activity. We had a coffee and what turned out to be pork buns (although I thought they were butter buns, which would have been much better for dunking in coffee) in a little place on Broadway that was filled only with old Chinese people. Our waitress didn’t speak English, which partly accounts for the pork buns.

From there we went on to the Ferry Terminal Market, which was a bit of a let-down after the frenetic activity of Chinatown. The Ferry Market is a larger and Disneyfied version of Eastern Market. It was very nice, and had great views of the bay and the Oakland Bay Bridge, but everything was a bit too upscale and polished to be of any real interest.

So we headed back to Chinatown for a late lunch at another restaurant filled with only Chinese people. The place was loud and chaotic, the way it should be. The food wasn’t great, but it was good, and it was authentic. The tea was wonderful, served in plastic water glasses. After that, my wife had an acupressure foot massage while I wondered over to City Lights, which must have every work of fiction ever published. They only stock paperbacks, which is an interesting (and affordable) concept. (A side note: check out Red Onion Records and Books at 18th and T Streets, just south of Adams Morgan here in DC. It’s small, but they have great used books and records.)

After my wife’s feet were back in working order, we went to the Chinese Historical Society of America museum in what used to be the YWCA. I was amazed at how much discrimination the Chinese faced in the United States, right up through the 20th century. I felt ignorant and uneducated there, and I’m eager to learn more. After that, we headed back to the hotel for a rest, before going out for the evening.

Next: Fisherman’s Warf and sushi.

San Francisco, Day One

2007-09-04T22:35:00.000+01:00

We arrived at SFO about 8:30 in the morning and took BART to Powell Street near Union Square. After some philosophical ponderings on BART’s choice of filth-gathering upholstery and carpeting, and amazement at how the landscape really did look like Italy, we emerged into the crowd of tourist and pan handlers around the cable car turn-around. It was over-cast (which we soon learned was really just fog), we were tired, we had a lot of luggage (which we usually don’t have, except that I had my work attire and my wife had her painting rig), and we had a 4 block climb up Powell Street to our hotel. I had planned on taking the cable car up the hill, but the line was probably an hour long. How silly.

The Hotel Beresford was small and quaint, everything that the Monte Carlo wasn’t. The room was tiny with a view of a brick wall and a square of now blue sky (hurray!) above. But it was perfect, with a fridge stocked with good beer at cheap prices.

We left the hotel just before lunch time and headed straight to the Asian Art Museum. Well worth the visit. The walk to the museum, however, was even more worth it. We took Market Street from Union Square along the edge of the “Tenderloin,” and let me tell you, I thought I knew what homeless drug users were, but I had NO IDEA. DC doesn’t have a homelessness problem compared to San Francisco. Maybe they all just congregate near the sex shops and liquor stores and cheap hotels along Market, and maybe if you pulled all of DCs homeless together in one place, there’d be just as many, but I’ve never seen anything like this, not in Europe, not in New York, not anywhere. People of all ages and races, both sexes, talking to themselves or yelling at each other, scabby and dirty and skinny, sprawled on the sidewalk or stumbling out of alleys, scores of them. There were also scores of people like us walking along as well, so I never really felt unsafe, more uncomfortable, as if I had surprised someone (or a lot of someones) in an intimate and embarrassing moment. We didn’t notice the drug-addled homeless masses anywhere else, not even in Haight-Ashbury, at least not to the same extent.

As the shock of the Tenderloin wore off, we explored China Town, Northbeach, Telegraph Hill, and Union Square.
San Francisco is a deceptively small city. We walked everywhere and I was always surprised by how short a time it took. The hills are, of course, daunting, and make things seem farther apart, and aside from some huffing and puffing and a little sweating (only on my part), we had no problem negotiating those hills.

We had terrific food at Nanking Palace on Kearney, recommended by Frommers. It was full of tourists, so we were a little skeptical at first. But we let the waitress order for us, and it was unbelievably good. We didn’t even eat dinner that night, save a glass of wine at a vinoteca close to the hotel. More to come.

Ultra-Amazing Sophisticated Fantastic Fabulous Las Vegas!

2007-09-04T18:17:00.000+01:00

As previously reported, the wireless modem was not warmed up and it worked no where I tried it. Hence, no “live blogging” from the road as I had planned.

But I’ve got lots to say about our travels.

We arrived in Las Vegas on a Thursday evening and stayed at the Monte Carlo, one of the nicer hotels, in our opinion. The food was so-so, but the pool is nice.

Neither my wife nor I gamble. We’ve talked about this a lot, and formulated lots of reasons to not gamble.

My aversion to gambling has little to do with any system of ethics. While the idea of getting something for nothing, which is essentially the attitude one has when one places a bet on a game of chance, is counter to my philosophy of life, that’s not really why I don’t like to gamble. I don’t gamble because I don’t find it interesting.

This is the counter point to people who make the argument that the money they spend gambling is simply money spent on entertainment. They could spend it on football tickets, or admission to a museum, or at Six Flags, but they choose to spend their entertainment budget at the gaming tables or slot machines. These people enjoy it, and the drinks are free. I accept that.

I choose to spend my entertainment money differently. I’d rather have a nice meal, or go to the Louvre, or see a play. I get about as much enjoyment from gambling as I do from playing Shoots and Ladders. But to each his own.

Gambling, in itself, just isn’t that interesting. So why do people keep going to Vegas? What Las Vegas is really about, and I think the real reason that people enjoy it, is the allure of sophistication and excitement. You can get drunk in Vegas, play at being a “high roller” (at least as long as your cash holds out), see “sophisticated” shows, eat food from around the world all at the same buffet, see naked or nearly naked people, all within the strictly controlled and safe confines of a casino. It’s a fantasy world, where people can pretend they are experienced men (or women) of the world without ever having to actually engage the world.

The reality of Las Vegas is much more mundane. Las Vegas is cram packed with retirees dragging oxygen tanks and urinating on themselves so as not to leave “their” slot machines (which will soon get hot!), living out their twilight years in the twilight of the casinos surrounded by bleeps and bloops they probably can’t even hear. Las Vegas is full of mediocre food and absurd stage shows and water features that pander to the lowest common denominator. Regular people from all walks of life crowd Las Vegas Boulevard, people who have come to rub shoulders with the sophisticates they’ve seen in “Oceans Eleven” or even “Viva Las Vegas,” but end up struggling through throngs of people they see all the time at their home-town malls.

But the magic of Las Vegas is that, despite all this, people keep coming back. People still believe the fantasy.

Often, when I express this opinion of Las Vegas, people are offended. They accuse me of being a snob, but I don’t really care. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. If people like Las Vegas, for whatever reason, good for them. They should stand up proudly and say that they, too, know what they like and what they don’t like. Why should my measly opinion bother them so much? I suspect it’s because they don’t actually know what they like or don’t like. Pity. Life’s too short to go to Vegas simply because everyone else does and you can’t make up your own mind.

We only spent the night at the Monte Carlo, and left early the next morning for San Francisco, which was, unsurprisingly, much more to our taste.

If You're Going to San Francisco

2007-08-23T02:55:00.000+01:00

Which I am...

I'm going to Vegas and San Francisco, the first for a meeting (no, really! I mean it!) and the second just for fun.

I've heard from reliable sources (old x-military guys at work) that San Francisco is lost and there's really no point in going there. Like the 1890's, it's gone gay. Oh dear.

Las Vegas, on the other hand, I'm informed by the same sources, is worth the trip. You can see Venice, Paris, Rome, Monte Carlo, Japan, the South Pacific, and Egypt, and never be more than a few short breath-sucking steps from soggy fries and a coke!

I'll let you know my impressions. I've never tried it before, but I'm going to attempt to blog from the road. My wireless modem is all warmed up, and my fingers are ready to type.

A couple of caveats: I refuse to leave what happens in Vegas there, and I'm not wearing flowers in my hair (can you IMAGINE?!), nor am I leaving my heart anywhere at all (especially on a cable car)!

Why San Francisco and Las Vegas? Well, because Los Angeles and Las Vegas would be just too damn confusing, that's why!

Adams Morgan: Violence and the Tyranny of Parenthood

2007-08-09T12:49:00.000+01:00

The recent article in the City Paper about Late Night Shots got me to thinking about Adams Morgan. The article quoted an on-line thread that went like this:

"If I have said it once I have said it 1000 times. DO NOT EVER, EVER even go near Adams Morgan. That place is Ghetto.

Adams Morgan is only do-able if you limit yourself to a few bars that are close together.

Every minute you spend outside of an actual bar your life is in danger. And do not, DO NOT attempt to get a late-night slice of pizza unless you are a pro.

Any by pro I mean ready to fight people.

Everytime I’m in Adams Morgan, I take on at least 3-4 Ethiopans. Skinny little bastards are feisty."

Obviously, this guy is an unsophisticated, narrow-minded, frightened pubescent (even if he is in his 20s and gainfully employed) with little life experience and little hope of gaining any. But at least he’s honest. He doesn’t want to go to Adams Morgan, and I, for one, don’t want him there.

But there are other, darker forces at work in Adams Morgan: parents.

As part of DC governments on-going crusade to ruin the city, it has decided to enforce a law regarding tavern licenses versus restaurant licenses. Without going into detail, many places on 18th Street have restaurant licenses but don’t meet the food sales standard to maintain that license and should properly have tavern licenses. Except the city has now put a moratorium on issuing new tavern licenses until it drives a bunch of bars out of business by revoking their restaurant licenses.

Why?

Because some people moved to Adams Morgan, had children, and now can’t believe they are living in Adams Morgan with children.

A couple local news stations interviewed some stroller pushing moms on 18th Street, and that the basic message I got from them.

What these mothers on the street were really worried about was violence. Apparently, they take their toddlers to clubs at 3 am, or line up for pizza at 4:00 am, babe-in-arms, and then pick fights with drunken revelers over, what, a girl? Posh’s new hair color? A timetable for leaving Iraq? And end up getting stabbed and bleeding to death in the middle of the street at the feet of a police horse while their babies watch. Happens all the time.

Come on! Does the extremely limited and extremely rare violence on 18th Street at 3 am on a Sunday morning really effect your life so much that you need to start a crusade to ruin the neighborhood for everyone else? You knew what Adams Morgan was like when you moved here, and unless you do indeed take your kiddy out for a stroll at 3:00 am (and NOT EVENT THEN!), you won’t get stabbed or shot or anything else.

Please move to Reston. I hear they have a pretty good Don Pablos there.

Music's Destructive Impact

2007-08-08T17:16:00.000+01:00

I avoid listening to music whenever I can. Music listening, as we all know, leads to all kinds of anti-social behavior: drug abuse, pregnancy, dancing at Tom-Tom, voting. But listening to music also leads to something much worse: getting disagreeable songs stuck in your head.

It’s bad enough to have a song lodged in your brain that repeats for hours on end. It’s worse if you only know a few words of the song. For instance, I once spent an excruciating two and half days hearing in my head “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt.” That's it. Only those words. I woke up one morning singing it and it stayed with me all day. The next morning when I awoke, I was song free. What a relief! But sometime between the shower and the sock-garters, it snuck back in! I realized I was singing it again in mid “f-o-r m-y s-h-i-r-t” as I slipped on my shirt. (Perhaps clothing was a trigger; I briefly considered foregoing dressing all together.) It was only dislodged the next day by “When I think of you babe I touch myself”. I believe I can pin point the roots of my drinking habit to that exact moment in time.

Far worse, however, is when you have a disagreeable song in your head that doesn’t even have any words. Since yesterday, I’ve been hearing this 70’s dance song in my head, with no words, that has always bugged me. I can’t share my misery with anyone, because I don’t know the title, and apparently I’m tone deaf. I tried humming it to my wife, but she had no idea what song it was and only looked at me with a deep sadness.

The song goes like this: “dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah dadada dah-dah…” I know you can’t tell what the song is from THAT, but let me try to share with you my misery. This is what has been going on inside of me for almost two days:

dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah, dadadada dah – dahda dah – dah,

And so on.

And no, it’s not “The Hustle.” That goes “Do the hustle! do-do-do dodo dodo do-do, do-do do-do dodo do do-do…”

(do-do-do dodo dodo do-do, do-do do-do dodo do do-do, do-do-do dodo dodo do-do, do-do do-do dodo do do-do…)

Aw crap!

Hey Anonymous! I'm NOT a Slacker!

2007-08-07T21:03:00.000+01:00

For those of you who have been wondering (mom, dad, anonymous, cousin It), nothing has actually happened to aportablesnack. I’ve been off in the Provinces for business, spending much of July in the other Washington, specifically Spokane and Seattle, where it was even hotter than DC, jsut as Al Gore said.

I’ve also been busy writing other things, churning out intriguing new drink recipes that involve grain alcohol, letters denying parking tickets, and manifestos railing against DC’s street cleaning conspiracy. Such epicurean and epistolary activities, which in themselves consume a good amount of time for those of us who pride themselves on workmanship, lead almost inevitably to other time-burgling activities, such as temporary blindness, traffic court, and the designing of a contraption utilizing a system of pulleys and levers to de-boot ones booted car. (I never got past the design stage, although I did see a discarded boot with tell-tale pry marks next to the curb outside of Pollys.)

I’ve missed out on lots of hot topics over the past month or so: LNS, hot weather, public school Czars, pre-presidential cleavage, the usual blogger stuff. I’ve got nothing to add, which leads me to believe that perhaps I never did. And after so long a blogging lay-off, I wonder how I ever came up with even one idea for a posting. And now I know: I never did.

How I learned to Love the Heat

2007-06-28T21:14:00.000+01:00

You can ask anyone. If I look at a picture of the sun that, say, a kindergartener drew in the corner of his paper with a smiley-face on it, I start to sweat. On one of our first dates, my wife cooked me dinner and we sat out on the roof of her house on Capitol Hill in the 90 degree heat, and I ran out of things to mop the perspiration off my face with; there are only so many times you can use the table cloth, or your shirt sleeve, or your date’s shirt sleeve, before she’s ready to call the whole thing off.

I hate the heat. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where we have some cold weather and some hot weather, but mostly cool, overcast weather. So perhaps I’m just not used to the heat.

Over the past decade or so, around this time of year I question why on earth I moved to DC. But last summer, and now continuing into this summer, I find I don’t mind it so much. In fact, I kind of like it. All I have to do is walk a little more slowly, especially when I find some shade.

Maybe it has to do with U Street. U Street is hot these days. Soft asphalt hot. But I actually kind of like it. I don’t mind it at all. And I’m beginning to really not like air conditioning. I’d rather sleep with a window open and a fan on, even if it is 85 degrees out. Air conditioning makes my nose do strange things, and if there’s one part of your body you don’t want doing strange things, your nose would be it. At least in the top 5.

And I don’t seem to sweat quite as much, either. I can’t figure it out. My wife is beginning to question if I’m the same man she married. (Maybe it goes back to the fact that it was 97 degrees out on our wedding day, so now I like the heat.) (Aaaaaawww!) Or perhaps as we age our sense of temperature (like our hearing and eye sight and tolerance for “kids today”) begin to fail us. Soon I’ll be able to make extra cash walking across beds of coals. That’s be nice.

The Conference Call of Madness

2007-06-27T15:47:00.000+01:00

The other day, a conference call I was attending revealed a psychological tick that I thought had been beaten out of me with rulers and yardsticks in Parochial school: the tendency to laugh, suddenly and uncontrollably, in the most inappropriate situations. Back in elementary school, bizarre thoughts would flood my mind when I was supposed to be “reflecting on my sins” or serving as an altar boy, thoughts such as “what if the priest started making funny noises into the microphone, with a long crescendo of maniacal laughter?” Or I’d imagine that our teacher would suddenly explode, without warning, and then be standing there, black and smoking like in a cartoon, before falling over. Such things, of course, would shake me to the core of my being with laughter that I desperately tried to stifle with the fake cough or the head shake. By junior high, I’d been tortured enough to learn that nothing was that funny, and the strange images no longer invaded my consciousness.

Jump ahead a few decades, and I find myself sitting in a conference room full of people with four more on a speaker phone. Also on the speaker phone is Van Morrison, although no one had invited him. He had a lot to say about marvelous nights and moon dancing and such, a bit off topic. Obviously, someone had put the conference call on hold. Various people made jokes about it (none of which, by the way, precipitated my psychological tick): “if it were my office, you’d hear circus music” or “I think our hold music is the theme to Psycho.” Ha ha! Ha ha!

The meeting started and the music continued unabated. It’s bad enough having Van Morrison serenade you from a speaker phone, but it’s even worse when he sings the same song, over and over and over again, and much, much worse when that song is “Moondance”. (I just looked up the lyrics, and my GOD, it’s worse than I thought!)

As the meeting progressed into discussions of “functionality” and “search capabilities”, no one seemed to notice the music. And then it began: what if, I thought (oh crap! Not again! Where’s Sister Angela with the ruler? Help me Sister Angela! Help me!), what if the music suddenly changed to Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls” or Nine Inch Nails “Closer to God”, and for some reason it got really loud and then smoke started coming out of the speaker phone and then a rock star came crashing through the wall wielding a guitar and big hair and leather pants flicking his tongue around at random meeting attendees. Of course, none of this is funny. In fact, such things belie the onset of a psychotic episode demanding immediate medical attention and sedation. And at first I didn’t laugh. My invoking of Sister Angela seemed to have done the trick.

Then I took a sip of coffee and nearly spit it out across the table: instead of the image of some Slash-like character prancing about, I see my middle-aged, tubby, gray-haired boss stomping around on the table and screaching a-la-Steven Tyler. Somehow, I got the coffee down and shook it off. (Did you ever make hot coffee come out your nose? It’s burny.) But after that, each time I took a sip of coffee, the same or similar absurd images came to me and it was all I could do to keep from choking to death. I survived the meeting with only a few strange looks and no reprimands. But now, I can’t have a mouth full of any kind of liquid without experiencing the urge to burst into laughter. Water. Beer. Soup. Even wine. Wine! I’m at the end of my rope.

I’ll been in the loony bin soon. Thanks, Van Morrison, for destroying yet another life.

Confessions of a DC Gentrifier

2007-06-14T21:03:00.000+01:00

When I bought the place I live in right now, I considered many things: what was best financially and emotionally for me and my wife and any future children. Being close to work and metro was a priority so I wouldn’t have to spend very much time commuting and thus spend more time with my family. I also took into consideration my core values: respect for the environment, my belief in the goodness of urban life, my appreciation of a diversity of cultures. City living is green living. We walk an awful lot, instead of taking our one car. Our place is small, and shares walls and floors and ceilings, meaning it uses less energy. We live in a pre-existing urban environment, meaning that no new open space is being destroyed, no new utilities are being installed, no new roads being built for my benefit. I considered all these things when choosing where to live.

But I never said to myself “oh, and as an added benefit, I can get rid of some poor people or minority people this way, too, by running up property values and taxes.” In fact, quite the opposite: I worried (and still worry) obsessively about my culpability for what happens to people who find themselves in a financial situation that forces them to move out of a neighborhood they’ve lived in for a long time.

When I bought my first house near RFK Stadium in 2002, I knew that a young black couple rented it, but had moved out months before I bought it. I didn’t force them out, did I? I still felt a twinge of guilt about it, though. The landlord decided to sell it, but I was never sure if he decided to sell because his tenants moved out, or his tenants moved out because he decided to sell. (After I bought it, I was shocked that anyone had lived there: the floors were rotted away, the windows didn’t open, there was no air conditioning, there were rats under and in the house, there was one bathroom with a leaking toilet, the floors were sloped because of broken joists caused by a sunken wall caused by fire damage that had never been adequately repaired.)

I don’t like the word “gentrification.” It’s an inexact jargon word meant to stir up class antagonism (the Gentry are moving in to oppress the peasants!). The word does little to describe the enormously complex reality of market forces, economics, poverty, racism, city planning, zoning, public policy, and private choices. The reality is so complicated that one word can’t even begin to describe it; instead, it clouds with emotion and anger and frustration any clear thought processes that would allow people to begin to come up with solutions.

Take my old neighborhood near RFK. Some old couples sold their houses for 20 or 30 times what they paid for them years before. Sometimes their children forced them to sell and put them in nursing homes. Sometimes owners sold the houses out from under their renters. And sometimes the renters bought them. Sometimes houses and apartment buildings that were vacant for years, even decades, were rehabilitated and sold or rented to the influx of middle class people. Sometimes rental buildings went condo, forcing out the renters who couldn’t afford to buy. Sometimes public housing projects were closed and the tenants relocated to other public housing, and the land redeveloped to include some affordable housing and some market rate housing. Sometimes the public housing was saved from the wrecking ball. Sometimes an old person died and the children sold the house for as much as they could get. And some people couldn’t afford the rising property taxes and sold for huge profits and moved out. Which of these instances is gentrification? Which isn’t?

I guess it comes down to two things: freedom of choice and the responsibility to help those less fortunate. Is being against gentrification to be against an old couple selling their house for an enormous profit? Is it to be against a person like me, who values diversity and the environment and urbanity, buying a home in a once-working class neighborhood?

Or is being against gentrification to be against the wholesale redevelopment of communities in the name of progress, like what happened in Southwest in the 1950s and ‘60s? Is it to be for government programs and private initiatives that help the poor have a safe place to live while they pull themselves out of poverty? I hope that’s what being against gentrification means.

One thing is certain: it sucks to be poor. Whether you get pushed around because you have no clout, like what Haussmann did in Paris, or you simply get priced out, like what is happening now in Washington, being poor makes you extremely vulnerable. I don’t have a solution. I suspect there isn’t just one mega-solution, but many, many small things that have to happen, and none of them are simple and none of them can be summed up in a slogan or by a "-tion" word. But I know that the right thing to do is strive to help poor people not be poor anymore, and not feel guilty about the decisions we make in the best interests of our families.

The Long, Slow, Inevitable Ruination of U Street Has Begun

2007-06-13T16:04:00.000+01:00

I saw it, and now I may just have to move: not one, but a whole family of tourists on U Street. I wasn’t sure at first; I mean, how likely is it that an entire family with no connection to the neighborhood would be on U Street in the middle of the afternoon when even people from Fairfax or Shady Grove are terrified to step foot on U Street? (That’s a subject for another blog entry, and I’m just the man to write it!)

But there they were, mom, dad, and two kids, perusing guide books and plastic-sheathed maps, a-slung with cameras and fanny packs, milling about indecisively in front of Ben’s Chili Bowl. (I assumed they were there to see the “Craddle” tags; those artistes are such a draw. Perhaps DC government should give them a grant.)

I just couldn’t figure it out. I walked past them aggressively, just to let them know whose turf they were on. Their reaction confirmed my suspicion: they were crazy. The mother rattled off some sort of gibberish, which the father, who pretended to understand her, answered with similar guttural, monosyllabic nonsense. Frankly, they scared me a little.

I kept walking. It took me half a block to figure it out: they were German. German! It all made sense now! Germans are everywhere! They’re as bad as the Australians: interested in stuff, like history and culture and food and cities, and just head-strong enough not to listen to anything someone from Reston might tell them about “that” part of the city.

They’re still crazy, though. And it’s still gibberish.

All Hail Our Fuzzy Overlords (and Scratch Their Ears)

2007-06-12T20:38:00.000+01:00

I no longer believe in pets. And I don’t mean that I no longer believe in the concept of owning a pet, or the morality of keeping a pet. I mean I no longer believe that there are such things as pets.

I believe we are controlled by cute little animals, and it may lead to humanity’s downfall.

I look around my neighborhood, and in all the little pocket parks and on any space not covered in concrete, there they are: people stooping down to pick up poop. And who is making them do it? The little fuzzy creature at the end of the lead sniffing happily at a dead bird or a rat hole or the base of a light post. These creatures are not pets. They are the narrow end of the wedge, the vanguard of the coming revolution when our animal overlords will make us not only clean up their poop, but rub their tummies, feed them from the table, raise their young, and in some cases, even bathe them. I hear it’s happening in some places already.

It’s not just dogs, either. Don’t even get me started with the psychological warfare presently perpetrated by cats. And those googly-eyed fish? I don’t trust ‘em. Nor do I trust any animal content with running on a little wheel for hours and hours and hours. Something’s going on in their little heads, and it can’t be good.

While we still have the upper hand, I suggest we force them all to run for Congress. This would not only solve the problem of keeping all the so-called “pets” busy, but also solve the problem of Congress. How much worse of a job could a pack of dogs, 200 cats, and a handful of exotic birds do, even if they do desire world domination?

People Who Hate Metro

2007-06-01T14:24:00.000+01:00

I’m sick of people complaining about Metro. People who complain about pan handlers, or rude people, or poor service. What I say to you if you make any of these complaints: if you don’t like Metro, get back in you car and drive to work. What’s that? You can’t? Because there’s too much traffic? Parking is too expensive? Gas prices are too high? Oh yeah, that’s right, you’re a chronic complainer. It defines who you are.

I’m not sure what Metro system you ride every day, but apparently its not the same one I ride.

First, what pan handlers? What in God’s name are you talking about? Have you ever been anywhere? Do you even know what a pan handler is? Trying stepping over half-naked hunchbacks with their hunchback dogs on the steps of some cathedral, or being accosted by families of gypsies who make pathetic moaning and crying sounds in some cobblestoned square. While there are some pan handlers in DC, they are not on Metro; they are outside of the metro stations or Starbucks or the Natural History Museum or St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and while there may be an occasional guy on the train or in the station asking for change, metro card in hand, because, like Charlie on the MTA, he doesn’t have enough to exit the station, it’s not as serious a problem as you make out! All you have to do is ignore them and go on thinking up other things to complain about.

Rude people? There are rude people everywhere, and it’s been my experience that people are a lot less rude on Metro than on I-66. Inside their own two ton hunk of metal, people treat other drivers in ways they would never treat someone face to face. On Metro, not a day goes by that I don’t see someone give up their seat for an old person or a pregnant person or a disabled person, or allow other people to board or exit first, or go through the turnstile first, or up the escalator first. While there are many people in a hurry, walking quickly through the stations, so what? That’s not rude, that’s simply a person who wants to get to work on time.

You say the service is poor. Really? You pay $1.65 (or even three bucks) to go miles to work, bypassing traffic and pollution, and you can read or sleep or write or stare into space and think up even more stuff to complain about, and not have to pay for gas or parking or maintenance, and you complain because every once in a while you have to wait an extra 5 or 10 or 15 minutes for a train? Ever sit in a normal traffic jam on the toll road, where it takes an hour and a half to make your 10 mile trip home? You’re spoiled, that’s all. You don’t know a good thing when you have it.

Go back to Florida or Texas or Arizona or wherever you came from where cars rule and you don’t have to interact with other people and stop forcing me to write stupid blog entries like this one!

Going Out Gurus Love Borf the Leech

2007-05-24T20:30:00.000+01:00

Recently, Going Out Guru Julia reviewed the Borf show, The Consolation of Ruin, running through this weekend. The show, in an empty building on North Capitol Street, exhibits graffiti and multi-media stuff.

I usually like reading the GOG column, and while this piece was interesting, I couldn’t help but think that Julia was overly impressed with the whole Borf thing. She seemed infatuated with the “anarchy” of it all, and all but thrilled that she had to be blindfolded and led into the building.

That’s all okay with me. No accounting for taste. But then she writes that the show contains, among other things, a “pretty cool riff on the famous Eddie Adams execution photo made out of smiley-face stickers.”

I had to read that again to make sure I understood: yep. She said it. A “pretty cool riff.” Cool? COOL? COOL? Julia, what the hell is wrong with you? There is nothing romantic or cool or funny or ironic or anarchistic or radical or chic about this picture, about this death. The Borf Brigade appropriated it to use in their little side show of naval-gazing suburban angst because they are ignorant and self-centered. Julia, you should be ashamed of yourself for giving it any kind of credit.

So what’s this Borf show all about? Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years, you know who Borf is. John Tsombikos was arrested in 2005 for spraying paint all over DC, and now owes DC twelve thousand bucks. The Borf Brigade hopes to raise money to help him pay his fine.

Tsombikos (and his Borf Brigade friends) is an artist. What’s more, he’s a protestor, and an anarchist, with important thing to say! Things like “grownups are obsolete” and, as the Washington Post reported in 2005, Borf “…doesn't believe in the state, capitalism, private property, globalization. Most of all, he doesn't believe in adulthood, which he considers ‘boring’ and ‘selling out.’”

I’m not sure if by “doesn’t believe in” he means that he doubts these are real things (sorry, Borf, they do exists), or he simply doesn’t like them.

I suspect it’s the first, because it couldn’t possibly be the second: Borf grew up in Great Falls, pays (or did) to attend the Art school at the Corcoran, apparently eats food and wears clothes, and even drives a car, and the spray paint he uses doesn’t grow on trees. All these things, plus the huge amount of free time and the freedom to come and go as he pleases, are all the products of “the state, capitalism, private property, globalization,” and yes, most definitely, “adulthood.”

Sorry, Borf (and your brigade), you’re a hypocrite.

Like all anarchists, Borf wants to believe that he supports the oppressed and down-trodden, the workers and the poor. But these are the very people who do things like go to work every day at places like spray paint factories so he can have something to steal from paint stores, where other working people work. You know why they work? So they can eat. And pay rent. (Steal enough paint, Borf, and they won’t have jobs any more.) Not everyone grew up in Great Falls, Borf.

And then people like me and the Metro bus driver and the bar tender and the bookstore owner and the minister and the paper seller and the packer truck driver and everyone else who lives in DC (but ironically, no one who lives in Great Falls) have to pay to have Borf’s spray paint washed off or covered up.

Borf Brigade, why not go out and study drawing and painting, and maybe a little history and literature while you’re at it, and then spend a few years working really, really hard learning to make the best art you can while trying to earn a living. Or, is hard work and studying and paying your own goddamn way also things anarchists don’t believe in?

Senator Coo-coo Bananas Hates Rachel Carson

2007-05-23T12:59:00.000+01:00

Senator Tom “Coo-coo Bananas” Coburn, who, according to Wikipedia, has said that he favored the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and that homosexuality was the biggest threat to America, and said that television had sunk to “an all-time low” when NBC decided to air Schindler’s List, “with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity,” describing it as “...irresponsible sexual behavior...I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program”, has threatened to block a bill to honor Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and advocate of environmental protection.

Now, suddenly, Coburn has concern for 2 million people that die each year from malaria, which, he claims, could be wiped out by DDT. He squarely places blame for all these deaths on Carson.

If he’s so concerned with the loss of innocent life, why doesn’t he, a U.S. Senator, use his power and influence to do something about it? There are innocent people dying every day all across the world, from car bombs and rockets and small arms fire and starvation and genocide to HIV/AIDS, dysentery, and malaria. Take your pick, Senator, and propose something!

Instead of blocking a bill that honors a respected writer and scientist, he should propose legislation to end poverty, the biggest contributing factor to malaria. That’s a tall order, but for someone who knows everything and is morally correct on all issues, it should be simple enough.

And his argument about DDT and malaria is ridiculous. We used to have malaria right here in DC, but it’s been gone for a long time. A clean environment, sanitary conditions, suitable housing, clean drinking water, a reliable food supply, pavement instead of mud-puddles, are what help eradicate malaria. DDT can be part of that strategy (even Rachel Carson saw a use for DDT), but it’s disingenuous to think that only DDT is necessary.

Coburn doesn’t like Carson because he sees her as a left wing environmental crusader whose book helped bring about the Environmental Protection Agency, stricter environmental laws, and the U.S. ban on the use of DDT. While he’s a medical doctor, Coburn doesn’t believe in science, instead allowing his right wing political agenda to cloud any small amount of logical thinking his brain may be capable of. (To his credit, but only a small amount of credit, he did call for the firing of Alberto Gonzales.)

I don’t think it matters whether the senate honors Rachel Carson or not. Her work speaks for itself. Coburn makes himself look foolish, and only makes Rachel Carson’s calm reasoning, clear writing, and good science look even better by comparison.

How to Shop for Wine

2007-05-18T15:47:00.000+01:00

The thing about buying wine is that you’re not drunk yet when you’re doing it. This makes it rather difficult to grab whatever rot gut is cheapest and go on your merry way because your unaddled brain allows reason to cloud your judgment: “If this bottle is only $2.95,” you say to yourself, “there’s a good likelihood it contains something I would rather not drink, like antifreeze. Or goat urine.”

A $4.99 bottle might only contain rat hair or cockroach antennae, you reason, not as bad as the cheaper bottle, but still not pleasant. You continue reasoning on up the price scale: $6.99 probably just has dirt in it, $8.99 might be reasonably poison free but it’s probably made from something other than grapes, $10.99 must taste like gym socks, etc.

On up the pricing scale you go, until you are left with a wine from some unpronounceable French maison in the most expensive Appellation of France. And you can’t afford to buy that. So you leave, empty handed.

This is the problem I constantly run into while shopping, sober, at my little wine store on U Street next to The Ellington. They have a whole array of seemingly good wines at low prices all of which I’m scared to buy because of my unreasonable fear of blindness or hair loss or premature death.

There’s only one obvious solution to this problem, but it takes quite a bit of planning on my part. First, I must keep a half finished bottle of wine on hand in our apartment, a cheap bottle I purchased previously. I call this my “priming” bottle. Since I drank half of it before with no ill effects (except, of course, drunkenness), I know it’s safe to drink. So I polish off that bottle. But I must open a second bottle, because such habits indulged in frequently quickly build up mighty tolerances. I drink off half of that bottle, and then, thoroughly sloshed, I’m adequately prepared to go wine shopping. Off I go to my wine store, buying anything I want, because my reasoning now goes like this: “they don’t know whadahell they’re doing in this-here store, they got all the prices screwed hic! screwed hic! screwed hic! wrong. Mustuv left off some zeroes or somethin’.” In my inebriation, the inexpensive bottles seem quite the deal! You might be thinking to yourself that the opposite might be true, as well, that I could just as easily buy an expensive bottle using the same reasoning, but I’ve found this not to be an issue. Even drunk, I’m still a cheap bastard. And so I buy another bottle, take it home, set out a couple glasses, and pass out.

When I again decide to buy wine, I have waiting for me my half-full “priming” bottle and a second full bottle, and the circle is complete. I must admit, it’s not everyone’s idea of a good time, and it’s not even my idea of a good time, but it beats the hell out of drinking goat urine. Or, at least I think.

The Ultimate IQ Test

2007-05-17T17:21:00.000+01:00

I took one of those IQ tests on the interweb the other day, and I think I failed. I spent a quarter hour choosing shapes and completing patterns and deciding who was taller, only to find out in the end that I had to pay to get my results. And now they have my email address, ensuring that I get flooded with spam from tickle.com and everyone they sell their mailing list to.

I’m not very smart. If I were, I wouldn’t have bothered with it in the first place.

Golf Clubs on Metro

2007-05-16T16:04:00.000+01:00

"Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into a even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose." -- Winston Churchill

I’ve carried lots of different things on metro trains: groceries, cakes, boxes, bicycles, hockey skates. And now, golf clubs. I was forced to borrow clubs from a friend, and this necessitated taking them for a train ride to get them home. I’ve seen people with lacrosse sticks, tennis rackets, pizzas, full football pads, even an air conditioner, on metro trains, but never, as odd as it may seem, golf clubs.

Taking golf clubs on metro is not as strange of an experience as I had hoped. I got a few funny looks, but they passed quickly. Only one man made a comment, and not a very witty one. Something to the effect of “where were you golfing down town?” And I had been rehearsing my responses all day, too, but never had a chance to use them: “Well, you see, I seem to have lost my balls,” or “Is the clubhouse this way?” or “You know, I’ve got this wicked slice, and…”

The worst thing about it: golf clubs are heavy. On the train, leaning against them jauntily, one arm akimbo, hat at a rakish angle, it's easy. Riding the escalator in a similar, if slightly more compact, manner is no big deal, either. But carrying them down U Street, having to wait for the lights and dodge other pedestrians, especially after a long day of work, is quite trying. I nearly threw them under a bus, but I persevered, although I was forced to drag them behind me the last block and a half, tug-of-war style. And I gave away the three iron along the way to lighten the load. It’s a terrible club, anyway, more fitted for street fighting than hitting a little ball. I hope its new owner puts it to good use.

I’ve been trying to think of other seldom seen things to carry onto metro: perhaps I’ll wear ice skates next, or maybe ski boots with the skis slung over my shoulder. Or maybe I’ll wear boxing gloves, although I’d have to ask the station attendant for help at the turnstile. Maybe I’ll just wear a motorcycle helmet. Maybe I should anyway, all the time.

In any case, I haven’t returned the clubs yet, and I don’t look forward to carrying them once again down U Street. Perhaps I’ll just take up street fighting. The motorcycle helmet won’t look so crazy then.

Mules Frites on the Hill

2007-05-10T20:26:00.000+01:00

Eating mussels (not muscles; you only make that mistake once, I can assure you) is a strangely indulgent activity.

I had the great good fortune of having them at Belga Café last night. But when the waitress first put them down in front of me, I wondered why, exactly I had ordered them. There they were, piled in a steaming heap, their internal organs hanging limply from their open shells, bathed in garlic and wine and butter.

My first two beers at the Hawk-n-Dove, and the subsequent Duvel at Belga, got me to musing about what exactly I was about to eat. My thoughts left me reticent to shove the first peach-colored mollusk into my mouth. You see, I was at a loss as to what part of the mussel I was actually eating. Unlike crabs, where you know when you’re eating a leg or a claw or an eye stalk, or even beef, where you can at least identify which part of the cow you’re devouring: rib eye or rump or tongue, the mussel remains a mystery. The answer is, of course, that you eat all of the parts of a mussel: lips, brains, toenails, eye balls, and all. (I’m just speculating here, never having taken the time to really study a mussel.)

My reticence only lasted as long as it took me to tear the first mussel from its shell and raise it to my lips. I ate the entire vat, plus a few of my wife’s mussels as well, in a silent slurpy frenzy. The frites with mayo and a couple of Belgian ales later, and I couldn’t care less what parts of a mussel I ate, as long as I didn’t eat the shells. Although, truthfully, I probably wouldn’t have minded those very much, either.

Mayor Fenty Plagiarizes NC Education Plan

2007-05-09T13:02:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised by the Post’s report that “Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration copied significant portions of its education strategy verbatim from a plan developed by a North Carolina school system…” I wasn’t surprised because laziness is business as usual for DC public school officials and DC government in general. I wish it had been an aberration, something so shocking as to be nearly unbelievable. But, like most people in DC, I simply shrugged it off with a “eh” sound, saying to myself OF COURSE the top education official on Fenty’s team would blatantly plagiarize some other school district’s education strategy! What, you expect him to spend the time and effort to write his own?

Deputy Mayor for Education Victor A. Reinoso has taken full responsibility. Good for him for stepping up. But how could any government official think that it was a good idea to copy someone elses work, and especially one charged with reforming an underperforming school system?

I can just imagine the discussions as Reinoso’s team put the report together, how they would say things like “just copy this,” and “no one will find out,” and “it’s not a problem because there’s no copyright.” I’ve witnessed similar conversations in my professional life, but in those cases, reason and level-headedness usually carried the day. Not in DC!

I suppose one could argue that there is no legal issue. Of course, that’s not the point. What kind of example does it set, for students, for teachers, for parents, for taxpayers, when the freakin’ Deputy Mayor for Education is caught plagiarizing? The mind boggles.

What would really surprise me is if Mayor Fenty showed actual leadership and fired Reinoso, pulled the strategy back, and rewrote it so that it addressed the actual needs of the DC school system. But I’ve lived in DC long enough to know that will never happen.

Writing, Suffering, and Primo Levi

2007-05-08T16:02:00.000+01:00

I have a New Yorker cartoon pinned up in my cubicle. It shows a college student sitting in her Ivy League style dorm writing a letter home: “Dear Mom and Dad:” she writes, “Thanks for the happy childhood. You’ve destroyed any chance I had of becoming a writer.”

I think I had a happy childhood, and a rather easy life up to this point. I live a country with great material wealth. I want for nothing. I am personally more wealthy, in money and possessions, than probably 95% of human beings alive today. (If you’re reading this, you probably are too.) Does this disqualify me from “becoming a write?”

Lately, I’ve found myself reading Primo Levi, the Italian chemist and writer who was an Auschwitz survivor. He wrote some of the best books I’ve ever read.

Was he a good writer because he had good material? Are his books profound because the experiences he had made him profound? I’m not trying to make light of his experience; it's a basic technical question for a writer. Levi had terrible, life altering things happen to him. These experiences fueled his world view, and were fodder for most, and one could argue all, of his writing. If he had grown up in late twentieth century America, would he have written so well? Would he have written at all?

In college, I sat around with other English majors discussing whether you needed to suffer to produce great art. Back then, we agreed that in some way, indeed you did need to suffer, even though I secretly did not want to suffer, ever. You’d have to go through a war, or grow up in horrible poverty, or have been abused, or have some terrible disease, or be a member of an oppressed people to have something legitimate to say.

Today, I come down on this question in approximately the same place: you do need to suffer to produce great art. But I’ve refined my premise: basic human existence in no matter what circumstances provides enough suffering to fuel any creative soul for many lifetimes. No need to wish for or, worse, seek out more suffering.

Hard work, drive, and talent (whatever that is) determine what you fashion out of your experience. If you believe that you don’t have anything to say, then you don’t have anything to say. And if believe you do have something to say (even if you light your cigars with hundred dollar bills and are the picture of health), if you say it truthfully and well, and keep at it, then, indeed, people will discover that you do, indeed, have something legitimate to say.

So I’d like to believe that Primo Levi would have written great books no matter when or how he might have lived. But, selfishly, perhaps, I’m glad he lived when he did and wrote what he did.

DC Building Height Limit

2007-05-07T18:14:00.000+01:00

There’s been some talk recently about raising DC’s building height limit. In a recent Washington Post article, an architect speaking at a development conference is quoted as saying: "We have a moral imperative to increase density, to get us out of our cars." This is a laudable goal: as population density increases, retail businesses move in creating a busy, thriving neighborhood; the busier the neighborhood, the safer the neighborhood. Since DC is well served by both subway and bus, and plus is a very walkable city, new residents won’t necessarily increase car traffic. Higher density is green by its very nature. Higher density is a good thing. But we don’t need 30 or 40 story buildings to achieve it.

The premise is that DC is running out of vacant land on which to build, and soon there will be no sites to develop from Florida Avenue south to the waterfront, and from Capitol Hill to Georgetown.

Right now, there is an awful lot of vacant land and under-developed real estate in those areas, and adjoining neighborhoods. Once those are all built out, perhaps the city should consider raising the building height limit.

But even then, there is really no reason to.

A critic of the plan to raise the building height limit said that “…high-rise buildings would spoil a low-lying, Parisian-style city.” Paris is an interesting comparison. If only DC were like Paris! Paris has a population density over 6 times higher than DC’s. (Paris: approximately 64,000 people per square mile; DC: approximately 9,000.) How is that possible?

There are very few buildings in Paris that are higher than 6 or 7 stories. But there are also very few buildings that are lower than 6 or 7 stories.

I’m not suggesting that DC should strive to have that kind of population density. But a little more density would be nice. To increase density, we don’t have to get rid of the building height limit; we simply have to use our real estate more efficiently. Most of residential DC consists of neighborhoods filled with 2 – 4 story row houses. In Paris, these neighborhoods would be fill with 6 and 7 story apartment houses. We don’t need to destroy DC’s huge stock of wonderful row houses. But I am suggesting that places that are blighted with bad mid-20th century development be transformed into something more urban.

All over the city, there are examples of 1950s – 1990s one and two story buildings that are a waste of real estate. Look at 14th Street NW between, say, R and W streets. Or consider the building across the street from The Ellington on U Street: Crème is located there, and a dollar store, and the Rite Aid on the corner, among other businesses. Great uses, but the building itself is only a single story. Ten or 20 years ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to build what amounts to a strip mall there. Four or five more stories on top of it, which is in character with the rest of the neighborhood, and you’ve just increased density. Twenty years ago, a one story building may have made economic sense; today, the owner of that building is losing money (or at least not making money) every day that he can only rent out one floor. Development like this could happen all over DC’s central core.

There are many ways to achieve a good density. Getting rid of the over-all height limit in DC is not one of them. Encouraging the kind of in-fill development I described above could help.

Suburban Youth Teach U Street A Lesson

2007-05-04T15:55:00.000+01:00

MAGIC TRAGIC 2AM, NEHI, and so on. A couple mornings each week as I walk down U Street, I see the latest angry expressions that the oppressed masses of disenfranchised white middleclass suburban youths have spray painted onto my neighborhood’s buildings, bus stops, and sidewalks. Much like the ’05 Parisian riots of unemployed and shunned suburban youths, or the riots that tore apart this same stretch of U Street 40 years ago, these youths are expressing their outrage at the injustices they see all around them.

Apparently, this group of (sub)urban radicals has put together a searing manifesto, which includes such items as “one of the five televisions in my house may not be working”, “my parents didn’t (that’s right, DID NOT) buy me the latest nano for Christmas,” and “first Napster, and now just possibly Pandora!” One cannot help but sympathize.

In a show of solidarity, I suggest that the residents of DC take it to the streets (or the Drives or Courts or Cul-de-sacs or whatever). Let’s head out to Silver Spring and Bethesda and Wheaton and express our own outrage on their buildings and bus stops and sidewalks (if they have sidewalks, that is)! Meet me at the Duron Paint store on 14th Street in Columbia Heights tonight just before closing. Wear your most tattered hoody and we’ll head out to commit acts of, well, random vandalism, I guess.

I’m open to suggestions as to what to what our "tag" should be. It has to be of course cryptic, have a rather loose relationship with grammar, and strike fear into the hearts of suburbanites. I’ve come up with a few ideas, like “COMMUTER TOLLS ARE GOING TO GET YOU” or “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE? (HINT: IN DC, AT NIGHT, WITH SPRAY PAINT!)” or “PLEASE DON’T RUN ME DOWN JUST BECAUSE I’M WALKING”; but perhaps those are too long and violate the “cryptic” mandate.

Or maybe DC should institute a new curfew, but only on white suburban kids.

I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore

2007-05-03T13:47:00.000+01:00

My wife has decided it would be funny to make a certain obscene gesture whenever anyone walks past our apartment. This may be directly related to her other decision to put coconut rum in everything: sauces, gravy, deserts, drinks, house plants, shoes.

Being the supportive husband, I’m happy with her decisions, and they've given me license to make a few of my own, the most important of which is the decision that I’m not going to take it anymore.

Now, what is the “it” that I’m not going to “take” anymore, you might ask? And to where have I been taking “it” up to this point? These are both good questions. “It” can be many different things, and their destinations are equally variable. “It” might be a banana I don’t want to eat because it has turned brown and mushy. Some people might like that, but I can assure you, I’m not one of them. Traditionally, I’ve taken such “its” to work as part of my lunch, only to dispose of “it” in a coworker’s bottom left desk drawer.

Other “its” might turn out to be small pocketable items arrayed on the shelves of local purveyors of sundries that I have no right to “take” (at least not without the requisite exchange of currency) but always seem to end up in my bottom left desk drawer. I believe I have a problem with bottom left desk drawers. You might even say I’m a “bottom left desk drawer” man.

But probably the most important “it” is an umbrella. I’ve taken “it” just about everywhere, and for what? It neither raises me in my colleague’s estimation nor is it useful as either a defensive or offensive weapon. Plus, I’m always leaving “it” everywhere, necessitating sheepish returns to stores, museums, offices, alligator nests, and scenes of drunken merriment in vain attempts to recover “it.” I don't need the hassle and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Wasted my talent? I made 68 albums! Talent, Writing, and Selling Out

2007-04-23T16:06:00.000+01:00

Deanos dilemma (being accused by a dead Homer Simpson in heaven of wasting his talent) is quite frightful for the creative soul. The implication is that Deano sold out.

Most of us wish for such troubles; if you “sell out”, it means that (a) you had talent in the first place, and (b) people wanted to pay you a lot of money.

But what does selling out mean? And can you sell out without being successful?

I’ve attended (and even taught) my share of creative writing workshops. Inevitably, there is always at least one student who wants to know what the secret is of selling his work. He comes to class hoping to find the secret formula, the magic knowledge that will land him on the best seller list. The answer, of course, is quite simple: write good stuff. And then send it out. Repeat.

This need to know the secret formula is all too human, especially when you see what makes it onto the best-seller list. I mean, there has to be magic involved somewhere! This student doesn’t really like the simple answer, so he starts to formulate theories. I can distill all of the theories I’ve heard over the years into one question: “will it sell?” This question taints the rest of the workshop for such students. They’ll make comments about other people’s work such as: “I think your story is written well, but I don’t think there’s a market for it,” or “people are interested in Chinese coin collected right now, so why don’t you make the main character a Chinese coin collector?” or “using those types of words (swear words, 50 cent words, foreign words, etc.) will turn people off, so you should cut them out.”

These theories effect this student’s writing as well. He’ll copy what is selling write now, be it Clancy-like, Grisham-like, or King-like, and he’ll do as good or as bad a job as they do. But he won’t make good writing. What ever you think of these writers, on thing is certain: they didn’t set out to copy anyone or write to the market. They wrote what they wanted to write. But this poor guy spends his time trying to time the market. He might have talent, he might not. Whatever “talent” is (and I’m not sure), it’s not as important as working hard and believing in what you write. How can you believe in what you write when are trying to write for some amorphous “market”, and not for yourself?

The question “will it sell” spells death to creative writing. We all struggle with self-censorship as it is, ranging from “what will my mother think if I write this?” to “will I be labeled a big fat jerk if I say that?”

Are people like Clancy and Grisham and King sell-outs? I’d argue that they didn’t have much talent to squander in the first place, so they aren’t. What about the poor guy in my writing workshop? If he really has something to say and the drive to work hard, but keeps getting stuck on “will it sell,” he’ll never be a sell-out, because he’ll never be successful. He’ll simply waste any talent he has, and lots of time.

I had a creative writing teacher who said “if you really want to make money, go sell drugs. Or play the lottery. Don’t waste your time writing.” Clancy and Grisham and King hit the lottery. But they also wrote what they wanted to write, market be damned. So did Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston, but they didn’t hit the lottery, at least not like the other three did. I’d argue that none of the six are sell outs.

So which of them are good writers, which of them are bad? Which of them used their talent to its full potential, and which of them didn’t? Which of them helped create a better world, and which of them didn’t? I have no idea. The only thing I know for sure is that some of them wrote books I like to read, and some of them didn’t.

Gun Are Already Legal in DC!

2007-04-20T15:53:00.000+01:00

On a neighborhood list serve I’m on, a debate was recently raging about gun control in DC. It stemmed from a recent robbery attempt in which an assailant wildly fired a pistol while fleeing. People weighed in on both sides.

Basically, what it comes down to is the old 2nd amendment debate. I’m tired of hearing about it.

Regarding current district law, there is no constitutional issue. Any law abiding citizen in DC can own a fire arm. Let me make that statement again: any law abiding citizen in DC can own a fire arm. You just can’t own a pistol or a “sawed-off shut gun.” But you can own a rifle or a non-sawed-off shot gun.

The people who make the argument that they want to own a hand gun so they can protect their families and homes are being disingenuous. Leaving aside these peoples paranoia, siege mentality, mistrust of government, mistrust of humankind, and logical absurdity, here’s why they are disingenuous: if I wanted to own a firearm to defend my home from a burglar, murdered, or any other “home invader”, why would I want a pistol? I’d want a giant shot gun. You barely have to aim a shot gun. In a time of panic and fright, why would I want to mess around with a pistol, trying to aim it with a shaky hand, perhaps in the middle of the night, perhaps from across a room? A shot gun makes so much more sense.

That said, I don’t want a gun in my house of any kind. But, let me say this again: the people of DC already have, and have always had, the right to keep and bear arms: shotguns and rifles.

That should end the constitutional debate. But of course it doesn’t.

Mayoral Trademarks: Crack Pipes to Hats to Motif Coffee Mugs

2007-04-18T14:00:00.000+01:00

Among my many titles, I answer to the moniker Alderman of Coladams Circle. I also answer to Ombudsman of all the Internets, Commodore Way-Cool, and Mary Queen of Scots. (I’ve also always wanted to be referred to as “Pontifex Maximus”, simply because of how it rolls off the tongue, and, of course, because of my unnatural love of bridges; there are, however, certain untenable drawbacks to holding that title, so I’ve always declined its bestowal.)

But as Alderman of Coladams Circle, which is much like being a Mayor, I feel I need some sort of recognizable trademark.

Mayor Williams had his bow tie.

Mayor Barry had his crack pipe.

And now Mayor Fenty has that… that… that HAT. (His haberdashery knows no bounds.)

Having been lauded on one of the internets (as Ombudsman, I keep current) for my “dipshit galoshes”, I thought about using those as my trademark. But that would mean that I would have to wear them to every public appearance, every function, every ribbon cutting, charity event, press conference, and speaking engagement that takes place in Coladams Circle. You know, like Fenty does with that…that…that HAT.

I just got a new rain coat and I considered using that as my trademark, since you never know when it’s going to rain. But associations with flashers, spies, and confused old men (I have enough trouble with that one already) convinced me otherwise. I also have that Norwegian sweater I’m constantly spotted wearing in that picture over there. However, I’m afraid that the sweater would become so besotted with body odor and perspiration (and the attendant swarm of flies and colonies of mold) during DC’s long, hot summers as to tarnish my reputation as a dandy and preclude me from any but the most scandalous of public appearances.

So I’ve decided on a pair of rumpled kakis and a half full Christmas motif coffee mug. To be truthful, I didn’t really decide on this; it’s more of a default position. I’m so often seen with these accoutrements that it was a natural fit. I think these would be as logical a trademark for a man of my lofty station as Fenty’s use of that…that…that HAT.

The Everglades Want to Kill You

2007-04-17T18:28:00.000+01:00

Not wanting to wait until I found myself in the closing jaws of an alligator or eating what I thought was lettuce but turned out to be one of the many poisonous Everglades plants, I decided to do some much needed research. I made this decision in Key West, however, the day before we were to plunge into the wilds of the Everglades to set up camp. This limited my research options.

I only found one book in Key West about the Everglades. Fortunately, it contained the information I was looking for. I quickly learned that the Everglades could kill you 50 different ways the moment you step out of your car.

To start, there are water moccasins, copper heads, and two kinds of rattlesnakes, and perhaps various species of constrictors and pythons that have escaped into the wild. As long as you don’t sneak up on them, or go swimming with them, or insult them in some way, the snakes will leave you alone. But it is not uncommon for a visitor to be attacked by more than one snake at time in the Everglades, even more than one species of snakes. Or so I imagined. Because one has little to do in Key West when sitting on the beach drinking Red Stripe after Red Stripe while reading about the Everglades, except contemplate all the forms in which death could visit you there.

I also learned that the Everglades is home to Florida panthers. Seeing as how they haven’t won a Stanley Cup in a while and are forced to live in a swamp, I knew to be wary of them. But I figured they’d be rather unwieldy trying to negotiate through mangroves and quicksand on ice skates (even if there are hockey skates). How silly I felt (and tipsy) when I continued my reading and found that these “panthers” are actually rather large carnivorous cats. To add to the confusion, the book compared them to other “mountain lions” around the U.S., like the “Nittany Lions” of Pennsylvania (or the “Panthers” of Pitt).

Thoroughly confused (and more than a little worried), I then learned about, what else, alligators. I understand the issue with alligators. I had no intention of poking any with a stick or thrashing about woundedly in the water. But what I didn’t know is that there are also crocodiles in Florida. I’m not sure if I can tell the difference between a gator and a croc, but I hoped this confusion wouldn’t lead to some sort of reptilian meal-related mishap, for I figured with my luck, I’d be staring at the open mouth of one of these animals (after having jumped into the water in a frantic attempt to escape a pack of snakes (or hockey players)), trying to determine if it were a crocodile or alligator (I think you count their teeth, or make a bag out of them and see how it wears, or something), when the other kind would sneak up behind me and CHOMP, there would go my glove hand.

Compared to the various animals who want to kill you, there are also any number of poisonous plants. In particular, there is a tree called the Poisonwood. The book provided helpful pictures. The problem was I was drunk, so the picture of the Poisonwood tree looked to me like a picture of an Oak tree. Or a maple tree. Or any tree, really. (On a side note, the picture didn’t improve the next day during my hang-over.) Since we would be camping, I was worried about inadvertently using poisonwood for the camp fire. I imagine that breathing the smoke of a burning poisonwood log would be rather irritating. It might make your lungs itchy, necessitating all sort of inventiveness and contortions as you make a desperate yet vain attempt to scratch your lungs.

The Everglades are full of other comparatively minor nuisances, such as thick swarms of mosquitoes (unbearable at some times of the year, the book said; oh, and Deet doesn’t work), biting flies, wasps, hornets, bees, buzzards, gulls, jelly fish, and any number of allergens at all times of the year. As we drove east on the Overseas Highway, I began to question why we were going to camp in the Everglades. Then I remembered: it's beautiful. And it was! (Pictures still forthcoming.)

DC’s Friendliest People

2007-04-12T16:15:00.000+01:00

DC gets a bad rap as an unfriendly place. You walk down the street and no one says hello to you. People pass you by either with down-turned heads or cell phones stuck to their faces. Some people have mastered the skill of typing away on those little itsy bitsy Blackberry keys as they walk along, never once getting hit by a Metro bus.

The bad rap is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone here is from somewhere else, usually a more friendly small town where people are nice, a place to which DC compares unfavorably. When these people arrive from “Indiana” (in quotes because there’s some question in my mind as to whether it is an actual place) or “Missouri” (same reason for quotes), they decide they must fit in, and thus walk around ignoring everyone else’s existence.

But if you’re open to it, you’ll find many friendly people here in DC, because DC has a long tradition of friendliness, from politicians on the take to squirrels to regular people. For instance, there’s the guy near the door of the Starbucks next to the U Street Metro (I think he lives there) who greets me every morning and evening with the delightful words “help me get something to eat?” What’s more friendly than requesting a total stranger to share food with you?

In my old neighborhood near RFK, I had countless offers of help unloading my car or raking leaves or cutting grass, totally unsolicited help, help that I didn’t need, help that was a little aggressive and frightening, help that (of course) required compensation. Such friendly helpfulness!

There’s the joke guy who sometimes followed me down Pennsylvania Avenue on Capitol Hill telling me off-color jokes for some reason, and then there’s the “Final Jeopardy” guy down town who always wishes me to test his knowledge of state capitals as I staggered out of Indebleu (I’ve learned that’s how it’s spelled even when you NOT drunk!); better him than me, I say! I can only imagine the scene if he insisted on testing my knowledge of state capitals as I steady myself against a light post and blather on about how much I love him, man! He wouldn’t give me a cent.

But the friendliest guy I’ve met in the city was on Capitol Hill. He was some sort of Bottom–like mechanical, dressed in blue work clothes and a tool belt. I met him four or five times at various locations around the Hill, and he always seems to be in the same pickle. Quite the absentminded fellow, he’s constantly on the phone with his wife, trying to figure out how to get home. You see, he consistently leaves his wallet and keys in his coveralls back at work and doesn’t have any change for the bus. He always tells his wife to hold on and he’ll ask someone, and that someone was me. He was always happy and amused by his mistake. Such a friendly guy! And so prone to forgetfulness! If you see him around (and I bet you will), become a part of the friendly DC and tell him his old friend at aportablesnack says hello!

Don Imus: Pathetic, Crotchety Old Man

2007-04-11T16:25:00.000+01:00

I’ve been trying to get my own radio show for a long time, but the only people who seem to get these gigs are folks like Don Imus.

What’s Don Imus got that I don’t? Let’s face it, I say stupid things all the time. I’m out of touch with reality. The youth culture of America frightens and confuses me. I should be a shoe-in!

With that said, I’m tickled by the Imus controversy. He has shown himself to be more pathetic than anything else. He’s an crotchety old man completely isolated from the larger culture of America.

For instance, his remarks, as I understand it, stemmed from the fact that some of the Rutgers players have tattoos. How many of us know someone with a tattoo, or have a tattoo ourselves? There was a time, I suppose, when only sailors and convicts had tattoos. Imus still lives in that age, when men wore fedoras and a coke cost a nickel. (He is THAT OLD.) A tattoo signified a bad seed (and rock and roll music rotted the brain). But a tattoo signifies nothing these days, except that the person who has it, wanted it. Imus is too out of touch to understand that. Or just about anything else. Look at the stupid hat he wears, for god’s sake.

The response from the Rutgers players was perfect. I characterize it as bemused. They defended themselves with quiet grace. Some of them even laughed about it. You would think that Don Imus and his aging white male out-of-touch frightened audience would look at the Rutgers players as role models: academic athletes who will do well in life, people who make them feel a little safer, whose existence assuages their white male guilt, so they can say “see, the American system works and isn’t racist and sexist!” But instead of expressing this only slightly less demeaning rationalization, Imus simply denigrates them, their achievements, and their humanity. (And even seeing them as “role models” is patronizing in the first place: why should it be surprising that young African-American women are smart and well-spoken (with or without tattoos)?)

I’m glad Imus made a fool of himself. He’s simply an old fool. He and his ilk are dying off, thankfully, and they won’t see the Rutgers players running companies, healing sick people, holding elected office, and just maybe hosting their own radio shows. He’d probably say something nasty about them, anyway.

I’m Glad to be Back from Sunny Florida

2007-04-10T15:56:00.000+01:00

Landing at National after 9 days in the warm Florida sunshine, despite the snow and shivering cheery blossoms, I was glad to be home. The gray skies and biting wind did nothing to dampen my feelings.

My life in DC is so much better than any life I could imagine in south Florida, for one simple reason: cars. Yesterday, this article in the Washington Post confirmed what I learned from years of commuting to Tyson’s Corner, a time in my life that is happily behind me. In the Miami area, it is just about impossible to live without a car.

This means, to me at least, that the cities of south Florida can’t compete with DC when it comes to quality of life. The best in south Florida are usually situated on the barrier islands. The beach towns, stretching from Miami Beach to Ft. Lauderdale and further north to Palm Beach, are about the best urban spaces in this part of Florida. These places, while fancy, are rather sterile, with little street life to speak of. No one walking to the corner store or the gym or the dry cleaners. No one walking to the local bar or restaurant. You drive to these places. At night, certain blocks come alive, but these rest of the streets are dead save for buzzing traffic. Most people who actually live in these beach towns, reside in cold, absurdly large and fantastically expensive condominium buildings. I’m not sure who they are, but it doesn’t seem they venture outside very often, except when they burst forth from underground parking garages in their bass-thumping SUVs or sports cars.

However, I actually liked these areas much more than I thought I would. South Beach is a veritable outdoor museum of art deco architecture, which is not my favorite. But strung together, building after building, block after block, with palm trees and neon, it was wonderful! There’s a certain amount of life coming and going if you sit still long enough to notice, and of course there’s the beach. But this is probably a function of contrasts: go inland just a few blocks, and you find yourself in no-where land. The southeast side of Florida, from Homestead north to at least Ft. Lauderdale (and probably farther) is one vast sprawling suburb, from the edge of the Everglades to the high rises along the Atlantic. It’s one of the ugliest places I’ve ever seen in my life. And I grew up in the rust belt.

What makes Florida so bad is the lack of choice. If you have lots of money, you have more choices (same as anywhere else, I suppose). You can buy a condo in Miami Beach and walk somewhere, if you can find somewhere you want to walk to. But if you are a regular person, you’ll probably end up living in a place that you must use a car to get anywhere. You have no real choice. Everything is the same. In most neighborhoods in DC, where lots of regular people (like me) live, from the Hill to Columbia Heights to Georgetown, you can go weeks, months, even years, without ever driving a car unless you choose to. To me, there is an indirect correlation between time spent behind the wheel and quality of life. The less time driving, the better my life.

So now I’m back in my little corner of DC, stopping at my wine store on the way home from work, having a coffee on the side walk, watching regular people do mundane errands, and I’m happy. Despite the strange weather, I’m glad to be out of Sunny Florida.

The Offending Cock

2007-04-09T23:13:00.000+01:00

Living on Sponge Cake

2007-04-09T17:35:00.000+01:00

My wife and I just returned from a trip to south Florida. Before we went, I had decided that I didn’t like south Florida, or Florida in general. I don’t know why I made that decision. (Actually, I do know why: because there are alligators there; but that sounds rather snobbish, so I didn’t want to bring it up here.) After spending a week and half there, I’ve come to the hard thought out decision that I don’t mind southern Florida. “Don’t mind” falls somewhere in the middle of my “Place Likeability Scale” or “PLS”. My PLS goes from “utter loathing” all the way to “I wouldn’t mind dying there.” Specific parts of south Florida tend toward “pretty darn cool” (which is 2 clicks below “I wouldn’t mind dying there” on the PLS), while other parts of the state come very close to “get me out of here!” (only a notch away from “utter loathing”).

Pictures are forthcoming, although none of them show me being eaten by an alligator. Which is kind of disappointing, in a certain sense, because THAT would make a great blog entry. The logistics of such an entry are rather difficult to imagine, but my journal entry below gives a flavor of what such an entry might be like:

“Key West, Friday, March 29.

"The island is over-run with chickens. They tell me they are of the “feral” variety, which I can only assume means “soft and cuddly”, because they look so fluffy and friendly.

"One particularly jaunty fellow is approaching me now as I sip my mimosa on this quaint porch. How amazing, he’s coming right up to me. What beautifully colors! What amazing plumes! Hi little fellow! I don’t know if it’s the 4 mimosas or three Red Stripes talking, but I feel quite close to this rooster right now. I think I’ll reach out and give him a little hug.

"Well, I’ve got a hold of him, and I think he likes me, although I’ll know better tomorrow during my hang-over when I’ll actually be able to tell if his feet are tearing up the skin on my arms as I imagine they must be. The claws look sharp enough to shred paper!

"Oh, look! Now he’s pecking my head. That, I can feel a bit. He’s moving down my forehead toward my eye. Boy, now that hurts! That hurts a LOT! I should probably throw him away from me, or at least leave off writing in this damnable journal for a moment in order to grasp him more firmly with BOTH hands. I’ll soon have to stop writing anyway, since he’s moving on to my other eye, and I’ll soon be blind. But no matter, because, as they say in Key West….OWW! klahtygiroqjkhfjbtyu5oheqvjrkqjvkbtroguifejhgj….”

I’m sure an entry about being eaten by an alligator would be at least twice as exciting, and probably have a better back-story. But we’ll have to settle for a feral cock. And he was, too.

It is sweet and decorous to die for ones country

2007-03-27T15:43:00.000+01:00

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Wilfred Owen, 1918 (after Horace)

My grandfather was in France, slogging through muddy trenches, fumbling with his own gas mask, and ultimately being wounded by a German bullet and left for dead around the time Wilfred Owen wrote his decidedly anti-war poem. He was recuperating in England when Owen was killed by German machine gun fire one week before the armistice.

I didn’t know my grandfather well. He was the tall old man with the stiff leg (from the German bullet) that still, 60 years later, would expel puss from time to time, who spoke little but did everything. He didn’t talk much about the great war. Once, when my grandparents were visiting, my brother and I had our toy soldiers ranged across the family room floor. Pap-pap sat near by, watching. After a while, he reached down and moved our tank, which was behind the infantry, to the front. “You always follow your armor,” he told us. I’m sure he had learned more, seen more, experienced more, but that’s all the wisdom about war he chose to impart to his young grandsons.

I often wonder what Pap-pap thought about the necessity of war. Being a man of few words, he wasn’t one to make grand statements or protests. We have a letter to the editor he once wrote, scolding those who illegally parked in handicap spaces around his small town in northern California. He had the credentials to make such a complaint. Beyond that, he lived more than talked. I get the feeling he wanted to leave the horror of war behind.

He was told many times that he was a dead man. At the field hospital in France, the doctors triaged him to the back of the line. He had lost a lot of blood, and seemed a hopeless case. They were surprised to find him still alive later in the day. When he was shipped back to England, he weighed about 90 pounds. He was six feet tall. He wasn’t expected to make it back to America. At home during the depression, the doctors found spots on a chest X-ray: TB. He went away to the mountains near Donegal, Pennsylvania to breath clean air and to die. It turns out what they saw on his lungs were mustard gas scars. I would imagine such things bring existence into clearer perspective.

He didn’t join the Bonus Army’s march on Washington. Instead, he took care of his growing family in western Pennsylvania. He was laid off from Westinghouse during the depression, worked odd jobs and for various relief agenciessix years, was eventually picked up again at Westinghouse and worked there until he retired. Then, in 1960, he started a second life in California, where he and my grandma (and a number of my aunts and uncles) ran a restaurant / gas station / Greyhound Bus stop at Patway Village along U.S. 395. He built a house, drilled wells, laid in an irrigation system and a septic tank, built a garage from the timbers of an old barn. I have fond memories of visiting there, the smell of sage brush and pine trees and my grandmother’s petunias, the fresh strawberries and peas and apricots.

My grandfather didn’t die for his country. Instead, he lived for his country. And for his family. Perhaps it is sweet and decorous to die for one’s family, or perhaps even for ones country. I don’t wish to make light of the experiences of the men and women in the U.S. armed forces, both living and dead, and the sacrifices they have made, because I truly believe it is a noble thing to lay down ones life for another, or for a noble cause. But it seems to me that, as my grandfather did, it is far superior to live for ones country and family.

Latest DC Slogan VIII

2007-03-26T21:02:00.000+01:00

Come for the Frisking, Stay for the Wanding

Latest DC Slogan VII

2007-03-26T20:07:00.001+01:00

Experience the Confluence of Willful Ignorance and Power

Another Latest DC Slogan VI

2007-03-26T19:23:00.000+01:00

Don’t Mess With Texas!

Latest DC Slogan V

2007-03-26T16:22:00.000+01:00

Home of The Lockheed Martin-McDonalds-S.C. Johnson & Son-Coca-Cola-Pfizer-AOL Smithsonian Institution for the Advancement of Consumerism

Latest DC Slogan IV

2007-03-26T15:53:00.000+01:00

What Happens in DC Stays in the Water Supply

Latest DC Slogan III

2007-03-26T15:22:00.000+01:00

Come Bribe Someone

Latest DC Slogan II

2007-03-26T13:41:00.000+01:00

Metrobreakdown

Latest DC Slogan

2007-03-26T13:00:00.000+01:00

Now with More Guns

It was (but it wasn't) Chelsea Clinton

2007-03-23T16:50:00.000+01:00

Question: how long does it take a person to find a digital picture of her signature posted by a total stranger?

Answer: 3 months. To the day.

See this comment.

I find this really cool! What took you so long?

Now how long will it take the rest of these people to find this post?

A Writer’s Washington

2007-03-22T14:34:00.000+01:00

Eric Maisel’s 2005 book, A Writer’s Paris: a guided journey for the creative soul, addresses an all too common experience among struggling writers: finding the time and motivation to write. “At home,” Maisel says, “you can keep yourself busy with the rigors and routines of ordinary life and not quite notice that you aren’t writing. There is always another errand to run, another meal to prepare, another corner of the garden to weed. Time is abundant and easily squandered, and also fleeting and hard to grasp. There is always tomorrow, but never today.”

Washington is full of would-be writers and closet novelists who I’m sure can relate. Anyone who has ever tried to squeeze a writing avocation into the slivers of time between a day (or night) job, family, friends, dry cleaning, groceries, and sleep will understand the fleeting nature of abundant time.

Maisel’s antidote is to go to Paris for an extended sabbatical and write. This may seem like a radical solution to what could be summed up as a simple self-discipline problem. But he is quite serious about it, because Paris is, as he says, “home to the entire intellectual history of the West” and “is the place you go when you mean to put your creative life first…Paris is the place to write.”

Maisel also advocates writing in the public spaces of Paris, for three or four hours a day, because, he writes, for “even for the most productive, published authors, three or four hours of writing is often the maximum.” Write in the cafés a la Hemingway, or in the Louvre, or relaxing in the allees of the Tuileries. Between writing stints, he instructs us to stroll around Paris, taking in the sights and sounds of the city of light, allowing us time to contemplate the larger questions of existence, and maybe find the perfect baguette, too. This is the advice I’m now taking, only I’m doing it right here in Washington.

Washington, believe it or not, compares quite favorably to Paris. While there’s no city on earth quite like Paris, Washington holds its own, a world capital full of energy and creativity. Washington boasts a large population of people from every part of the world, who bring with them their cuisines and world views, infusing Washington with a vitality found in few other places. People from all corners of America flock to Washington as well, whether to further their careers or to attend one of the fine universities within the city. And we can’t overlook local Washingtonians, whose families and traditions and neighborhoods inspired the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Edward P. Jones, to name just a few. The diverse denizens of Washington make it a cosmopolitan place, not so much a melting pot as a stew pot, rich in culture and thick with ideas.
There are world class museums scattered throughout the city, and embassies that host art shows and concerts. The largest library in the world, the Library of Congress, is a Metro ride away. Wonderful food abounds, from traditional French to soul food to Ethiopian to little places where the cab drivers congregate for lunch. (If cabbies eat there, it’s good food.) Washington has a vibrant theater life, behind only New York and Chicago, and also boasts a world class symphony, opera, and ballet company. Finally, Washington is a wonderfully walkable city, famous for its triangle parks and green squares, its fountained circles and city gardens, its monuments and architecture. Washington, I would argue, has everything to feed a writer’s soul, and his stomach.

Like many other writers I’ve met in Washington, I’ve got a problem of time and motivation. I keep my lap top on a table in my apartment next to a stack of unpaid bills and mail. Next to the table is a chair piled with laundry that needs to be folded, and next to that a stack of unread books has toppled over on the floor. Because writing, by its very nature, is hard, I’ve found it easier to occupy myself with not writing each day after work. I’m not motivated to write in my apartment. But strolling through the mad swirl of happy dogs in Lincoln Park, my spirits rise. Gazing at the city laid out before me from the big window in the Hirshorn Museum or watching the sparrows soar and dive under the great canopy inside the National Building Museum, or simply having a chili dog at Ben’s, and I am positively inspired.
So I’ve taken to writing in different places around the city. One sunny Friday morning in January found me at Murky Coffee near Eastern Market, writing among the cops and law students and hill staffers who filed in and out, buying their morning doses of caffeine. On such days, I’ll eat lunch at the Southwest fish market, buying a sandwich from Captain White’s and eating it with a view of the Washington Channel and the circling gulls. I might find myself under I.M. Pei’s little pyramids at the National Gallery, the tiny, lopsided cousins to the Louvre’s. At a table facing the rushing cascade behind the glass wall that fascinates children who can’t help but try and touch the water, I sip coffee and write. And I’ll stroll the streets of DC, the Hill in all it’s Victorian glory, colonial Georgetown, the European flavor of Upper Dupont, the eclectic energy of Adams Morgan. I’ve tried coffee all over the city, Love Café, Tryst, Open City, Murky, and I’ve got more to try.

My plan seems to be working. I’ve been writing, and, more importantly, I look forward to doing it. I’ve found that I can’t wait until I have more time to write, because I will never have more time than I have right now. And I can’t wait until I’m in the perfect place to write, either. DC may not be Paris, but it’s where I live right now.

Mathematics and the Modern Man

2007-03-21T18:58:00.000+01:00

I was given a receipt this morning at the coffee shop that had pink edges to it. Anyone who has ever worked a cash register knows that that could mean only one thing: you will be audited. Or, the paper is about to run out. I wasn’t very good at running a cash register.

Which reminded me of my high school math classes. A quite complicated mathematics word problem could be devised from the simple fact that the last few feet of a roll of cash register tape is marked with pink ink. It would go something like this:

“If a cash register tape roll is 180 feet long, and the last 10 feet are marked with pink ink, and each person who makes a purchase receives an average of 4 inches of tape as a receipt, and you make a purchase of a donut and a cup of coffee at the same time each day, and 356 receipts are given out each day from that register, how often will you receive a receipt marked with pink ink?”

When presented by a problem like this, I would always start with moral outrage. Why? Why am I subjected to such torture?

This is quickly replaced by logical outrage: when on earth would I ever be required to make such a calculation? But I was young, yet to enter the professional world, and I assumed that this was quite a common work assignment for most American workers. That, and figuring out where two trains would meet when leaving form opposite termini. (Aside: did you know that the main train station in Rome, Termini, is named so not because it is a railroad terminus, as I always thought, but because it is next to the Baths of Diocletian (Terme di Diocleziano). But that’s never on a math test, so never mind.)

Strangely enough, my assumption was correct. Not a day goes by that I’m not asked to make this or another similar calculation: how often will I pull a red ball out of bag full of white balls? (“What bag?” “The bag near the water cooler.” “I’ve never even seen that bag!” “This is going on your performance appraisal.”) How many contract employees will it take to do your job, assuming they are each 1.2 times as efficient as I am? (Answer: .002 contract employees.) Who died and made you king? (I can do this particular calculation in my head, but I choose not to share it.)

So, it’s a good thing I studied hard in high school, becoming proficient in many forms of mathematics. I attribute 90 percent of my professional success to my mastery of the concept of probability. That, and lying.

Anxiety at the Doctor’s Office

2007-03-20T16:17:00.000+01:00

I’ve watched a lot of hospital programs on television. Which isn’t a good thing. Now, I have quite a hard time at the doctor’s office: I’m either over-confident, second guessing the doctor with such statements as “don’t you think we need to order a complete CBC and CT scan, doc? That seems pretty routine these days;” or, left alone in the examination room waiting for the doctor to show up, I let my imagination get the better of me. I’ve seen too many routine procedures end up with someone sitting on top of someone else pounding on their chest with blood spattering a set of protective eyewear. It’s no wonder I’m nervious.

For instance, just today I was at my dermatologist. I’ve just undressed to my underthings, and I’m waiting for the doctor. Sitting in a cold vinyl chair, my feet on the cold linoleum floor, I grow a bit anxious. What if they forgot about me, and the doctor never comes? What if I fall asleep and no one finds me until tomorrow? Is there a certain amount of time after which I should I start yelling for help?

Worse, what if they’ve put me in the wrong room? What if I’m in the room where they do things like “epidermal scrapping” or “laser age removal?” That machine over there, the one with the long retractable arm that looks like a soldering iron, what’s that for? Is the doctor going to use that on me? Not if I can help it!

On the counter, there seems to be an overabundance of latex gloves for a dermatologist’s office, as well as huge piles of gauze and bandages. Dear god, maybe this is where they do the “skin replacement”! I bet that would involve quite a lot of blood and chest-pounding. They may even need to hose down the room afterward. I scan the floor for a drain, and I’m only slightly reassured when I don’t find one.

There’s a door on the other wall I didn’t notice before. Where does that lead? What if it leads to the accounting firm in the next suite, and this isn’t an examination room at all, but the accountant’s break room? I keep a close eye on my watch: is it coffee break time yet? It would be peculiar to be sitting here in my undershorts as accountants pour their coffee and talk of “amortization.” I suppose I’d just ignore them. What else could I do? Perhaps they will assume I was a client come to pay a bill.

To calm myself, I decide to try to amuse myself. Over there, on that stainless steel tray, there are some hypodermic needles. What if I just took the cap off of one and plunged it into this little glass bottle here, like I see them doing on television. There, I’ve filled it, now I'll squirt a little out of the tip (so cool!) and plunge it into my arm. There now, that hurts like hell. The accountant problem doesn’t seem so vexing by comparison.

I wonder what’s in this little bottle? Novocain, judging from the numbness spreading over my bicep. Or some sort of neurotoxin perhaps. But why would they leave neurotoxin about? Perhaps it’s Botox. Now, that clamp sitting there, I bet I can clamp my bicep and not feel anything. Nope, I was wrong. And I can’t get it off. Better inject some more neurotoxin: there, that’s mildly better.

I don’t want the doctor (or horde of accountants) to find me with a clamp stuck to my arm, so I better take some of this gauze and wrap it around it. I can claim I have some terrible injury. A doctor wouldn’t be interested in that. The accountants might be, but I owe them no explanation beyond what I’m doing in their break room. If they ask. Oh look! A scalpel! Better not mess around with that! But this gauze, let me wrap it around my arm, here. You know what would be funny? If I wrapped myself up like a mummy! I can just see the look on the doctor’s face when comes in! What a hoot! He’d be terrified! (Not sure about the accountants.) Imagine the sensational headlines: “Mummy Haunts Doctor’s Office (Accountant’s Break Room).”

And I go on like this, impossibly. I’m sure, when the doctor does arrive, he will think nothing of it. I bet lots of his patients suffer from such anxiety and uncontrollable compulsions. He probably finds them all the time in any number of strange and humorous situations: wearing surgical masks or latex gloves on their feet, using hypodermics as darts, hiding behind the soldering iron. And I’m sure the accounts’ clients are much worse.

Did You Get a Free Book from the Crazy People?

2007-03-19T13:42:00.000+01:00

On Saturday, Solas Nua gave away thousands of Irish books around Washington. My wife and I braved the morning cold at the corner of 16th and U Streets and personally gave away hundreds of books.

If you’ve never tried to give anything away for free, I highly recommend it. Quite amusing. Especially in this city. Last year, we gave books away on Capitol Hill, and people there seemed more at ease in getting something for nothing. (Must have something to do with Congress, but I can’t quite put my finger on what.) I’m not sure why U Street is different, but the people who are out on Saturday mornings, going to the gym, picking up their dry cleaning, getting their morning lattes, are much more skeptical.

My spiel was: “Irish books for free! For St. Patrick’s Day! Contemporary Irish authors! Totally free!” I’d say 75% of people walked past with either a skeptical look on their faces, or no look at all, completely ignoring my existence. Some of them actually laughed out loud, as if to say “I won’t get taken by that old scam again!” I think some of them thought we were somehow supporting the IRA. Another 20% would politely say “no thank you,” leaving the last 5% to do all the free-book-getting.

My wife said maybe I was too loud, or too insistent, and that perhaps I was scaring them away. I must admit, I was provoked by the people who scoffed as they walked past. I would keep talking to them as they crossed the street: “we’re all over the city today! More titles at Love Café! They’re totally free! Better than green beer! etc.” Surprisingly, this didn’t change their minds.

I was beginning to think that my wife was right, that I was scaring them away. Then, another man passed unheeding. He was walking a large, shaggy dog, and as he cross the street I commented “isn’t that an Irish Wolf Hound? Maybe he wants a book! Did you ever think of that?” He turned around and came back, causing me some consternation. But he only wanted a book of poetry.

It all reminded me of a college sociology project where we were instructed to go to a public place and give away a dollar. We all thought the teacher was nuts. He promised to repay us for every dollar we gave away. With nothing to lose, my friend and I staked out the entrance to a grocery store. We were not allowed to reveal that we were with a sociology class. We could only say that we were giving away a dollar because we wanted to. Talk about skeptical! No one took it. We increased the denomination to 5 dollars. Surely someone would take a free 5 dollar bill! But people were even more skeptical. We tried a twenty, and were verbally assaulted: “What are you trying to pull? What kind of scam is this? I should call the police! You should be in jail!” If we had had a 100 dollar bill, we’d probably have been shot.

Saturday evening we retired to our place and had baked potatoes and beer with friends before everyone went out to the bars. It seems almost ridiculous to have potatoes and beer for St. Patrick’s Day, but it was a hit! I think we’ve founded a new tradition.

A Different Kind of St. Patrick’s Day

2007-03-14T14:39:00.000+01:00

For the second year in a row, Solas Nua, the only organization in the United States dedicated to contemporary Irish arts, will be giving away thousands of books by contemporary Irish writers for Irish Book Day. Solas Nua volunteers will be all over the city at places like the E Street Cinema, Eamonn’s in Old Town Alexandria, and the Warehouse Theater at Mt. Vernon Square, along with many other venues. They’ll be giving away books all day long on Saturday, March 17.

Instead of simply getting drunk on green beer (or perhaps along with doing that), celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and all things Irish by participating in the thousands of years of Irish scholarship and literature: pick up a book or two or three! St. Patrick helped instill a tradition of literacy and scholarship in Ireland that continues to this day. Enjoy a great read this St. Patrick’s Day!

Federal Court Orders Reopening of Bladensburg Dueling Grounds

2007-03-13T15:25:00.000+01:00

Coming on the heels of last week’s decision overturning DC’s gun control law, the same federal court voted 2 – 1 to reopen the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds, an area Northeast of the city where politicians and affronted citizenry defended their honor during the early days of the republic.

In its order, the court cited a number of reasons for the reopening of the dueling grounds. “Given the new political tension both in Congress and between the White House and Capitol Hill, coupled with the fact that many congressmen and senators, especially from places like Texas and Alabama, are now expected to carry fire arms in the city, this court finds it advantageous to give these men an equitable way of resolving differences.”

The court is also expected to legalize the open carrying of guns on the streets of DC, and recommending the implementation of a system of “show-downs.” “Sections of Good Hope Road SE or even 16th Street NW could be cordoned off at high noon each day to facilitate the settling of scores in a more civilized and controlled manner,” the court said in a draft report obtained by aportablesnack. “The city could charge admission to spectators and the DCFD could hose down the blood and gore from the street afterward.”

Many DC citizens feel legalizing “show-downs” is long overdue. For instance, one of the plaintiffs in the case that led the Federal court to overturn DC’s gun control law is quoted as saying “yeeeeee-HAW! Now I can kill that guy next door who never takes his trash can in!” DC police also support show-downs. “Hopefully, the criminal element will kill themselves off more efficiently than they do now,” a police official said.

For now, though, DC citizens and police will have to be satisfied with legally taking their revenge killings to Bladensburg. “We’ll be exporting homicides to Prince George’s County,” the police official said, “which, no matter how you look at it, is a good thing.”

Lifting of Gun Ban Expected to Boost DC Economy

2007-03-12T14:03:00.000+01:00

The city has moved one step closer to economic stability.

Thanks to a broad Federal economic revitalization plan announced last week, DC criminals will soon be able to purchase handguns that were stolen from houses right here in the city. “Too long have burglary rings and fences in Virginia and Maryland been siphoning money from DC’s economy,” a Federal official, who wished not to be identified, said. “With this plan, DC can keep that money right here.” Instead of having to import stolen handguns from Maryland or Virginia, DC criminals will enjoy a bounty of stolen guns harvested right here in the city.

The economic boon will benefit various loosely organized racketeering, money laundering, and theft rings headquartered in DC. There will be plenty of handguns in peoples houses available for them to steal. In a statement released recently, The Department of Commerce states that “these guns will then be sold on the street to drug king-pins and enforcers, teenage gang-banger wannabes, drug addicts looking to knock over liquor stores and members of the creative class, and to the mumbling insane.”

While guns of all kinds are easily available to all these underworld elements, the new handgun plan will make it slightly more convenient to obtain them while pumping perhaps millions of dollars into the “informal” economy.

“After a time, perhaps as short as a few months,” the Commerce statement goes on to say, “we foresee DC becoming a major exporter of stolen handguns as well, further boosting the economy.”

Residual economic benefits include a rise in the demand for security systems, security bars, replacement window glass, gigantic snarling guard dogs, and more legally-purchased handguns, as residents try to combat the expected spike in burglaries, armed robberies, drug killings, and reprisal slayings.

“This will do for the DC economy what Starbucks did for Seattle,” a Federal source is quoted as saying.

In Praise of the Inefficient Bureaucrat

2007-03-08T22:38:00.000+01:00

Recently, I saw a college classmate. He’s a law school grad and now works for a big government department. For all his education, though, he still complains about the “inefficient bureaucracy.”

I hear this all the time, being a member of the inefficient bureaucracy. My job is to marshal paper through the bureaucracy. I help get policy, guidance documents, and regulations published. And so, I deal with complaints about “bureaucracy” all the time. Too much red tape. Too many hoops to jump through. Too many levels of approval. Why can’t we just do it? Just publish it without all the nonsense? We waste so much time. Why can’t it be simple?

Some coworkers and higher level officials I work with go out of their way to circumvent the bureaucracy. They want to get a policy “out” as soon as possible. So, they try to skip what they consider “extraneous” levels of review. Just get the Office Director to sign it and it’ll go out, they’ve told me. But they usually end causing more problems than they solve, and publication is usually delayed as a result. Someone has to clean up their messes.

I’ve always considered this a cowboy attitude. These people are rebels. They think they are smarter (or at least wiser) than all the GS-9s, 11s, 12s, 13s who hold up their projects.

After dealing with this phenomenon for 7 years now, I’ve come to a different conclusion. There’s a fine line between a rebel and fascist. What these people really want is the power to do anything they please. They don’t want to be constrained by rules. They want to be dictators.

But the bureaucracy is inefficient by design. And the inefficiency is good. The inefficiency is there specifically to stop such mini-dictators from wielding too much power.

(Let’s not confuse inefficiency with corruption. Corrupt governments seem extremely inefficient. That is until you pony up the correct amount of cash. Then they become amazingly efficient.)

The most efficient government is by decree. And government by decree is, of course, a dictatorship. The Nazi’s were quite efficient. So were the Soviets. But democratic government is not efficient. Everyone loves to complain about Congress and how long it takes them to do anything. But is the alternative better?

The executive departments also take forever to do anything, being hamstrung by statutes and policies that require such things as “public input” and “hearings” and levels of review, all there to protect the American citizen from government abuse.

Even if the mini-dictators in my department are nice people and what they want to publish as soon as possible is the best thing ever, the cure for cancer, the solution to world hunger, I still say they shouldn’t have that power. One person alone should not have the power to implement something that may effect hundreds of millions of people, even if it is a great thing. If it’s so great, it will get through the bureaucracy and see the light of day. The world has done without the great idea for all this time; what’s another month or two?

Complaints about the “inefficient bureaucracy” point to a larger problem that plagues so much of American society: time. The world is a complex place with complicated problems. It takes time to study and digest issues, and it takes time to think about them. At my job, whenever we rush to get something “out,” invariably, almost without exception, we have to reissue it because of mistakes, simply because we didn’t take the time to do it right the first time.

We have a saying at my office: “Do you want it done right, or do you want it done right now?” It’s trite, but I like it. So here’s to the GS-11s who make sure forms are filled out properly, and the GS-9s who give things back because all the signature blocks are not signed. Because when our bureaucracy becomes efficient, it’s time to start looking over our shoulders and searching our homes for bugs.

On Writing Well

2007-03-07T18:08:00.000+01:00

"You will never write a good book until you have written some bad ones.” George Bernard Shaw

I have an artist friend who says the same thing about painting. It’s about mileage. You’ve got to do a lot of work, gradually improving, until you begin to do truly good work. Doing a lot of work, generally in isolation, with little recognition and only small (but meaningful) intrinsic rewards, for a long time, years usually, is a pretty tall order. That’s why you meet so many people who “always wanted to write a book” or “want to write a book someday,” or sadly, who have given up.

Shaw’s quote brings up a couple of interrelated issues that all writers face: quality and time.

What’s good writing? What criteria can you use to judge whether a piece of writing is good or bad? For publishers, the answer is simple: what ever sells is good. There are lots of writing programs around the country who, we are to assume, will teach us these criteria. (Whether they actually do this is a matter for another posting. Let me say this: with whom did Faulkner “workshop” his writing? And can you imagine Hemingway sitting around a table listening to other people’s opinions about how he handled dialogue or characterization or “theme”?) There are also those who feel that any judgment about whether a book is “good” or not is extremely subjective. But I believe it is much more objective than people want to admit, even when it comes to fiction. Good writing says something important, reveals Truths about existence. So-so writing (and, of course, bad writing) may tell an exciting story, and it may even tell the story well, but that doesn’t make it good writing.

I’m not saying that good writing is didactic. Usually, stories that teach lessons fall into the category of “bad.” Good writing reveals, but doesn’t preach. It isn’t pushy or bombastic or egotistical. The best I can say is, while I can’t specifically define good writing (or bad writing), I know it when I see it.

This understanding of what’s good and what’s not comes from putting in the time. Time writing but also time reading, observing, and thinking. It is the rare writer who has success early on, and even those writers put in the time at some point, because there is no substitute for time. F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise, to great acclaim, soon after graduating from Princeton. But he wrote and read a lot his entire life up to then. Plus, he was probably a genius. But his best work still lay ahead. Most writers hit their strides in their 30s and 40s, and some continue producing quality writing late into their lives, if they haven’t been poisoned by success. (That, too, is a topic for another time.)

Where does this time come from, especially for people who are forced to make a living doing other things, be it bartendering or proof reading or bureaucrating? That, actually, is a deceptively simple question: you make the time. You get up an hour earlier. You write on weekends. You write in the evening. You take days off to write. You do what ever it takes. It’s a simple solution, but extremely difficult to implement. These are the problems that every writer faces, especially when it’s easier to meet friends for drinks than face the blank screen again.

I’ve always been of the opinion that you can learn to write, but you can’t be taught how to write. That may seem counter-intuitive. But let’s face it, you learn to write well by writing, just like you learn to hit a tennis ball well by hitting lots and lots of tennis balls. And you have to write a lot. I’ve probably written a million words of fiction so far in my life, and I have one published story to show for it. But I keep going, for reasons unknown to me, ever trying to make “good” writing.

Pittsburghese and the Grammar Rodeo

2007-03-06T16:20:00.000+01:00

My wife and I have gotten into a grammar competition of sorts. It hasn’t risen to the level of a Canadian-sponsored Grammar Rodeo yet, but it’s getting there. And it’s really not much of a competition, either. I, being of a literary bent, am far inferior in matters of grammar compared to my artist wife (who knows 3 other languages). I’m also from Pittsburgh, which doesn’t help. While she has broken me of the habit of saying that the “car needs cleaned”, I have a number of other grammar challenges which she takes a certain joy in pointing out.

It goes like this: I’ll be regaling her with a spell-binding story, and I’ll say something like “…and the snarling man-eating bear was so much bigger than me…” and before I can get out another cliff-hanging word, my wife will say in a calm voice, “than I.” This always stops me dead in my tracks, and usually causes me to say “than me,” which prompts her to respond “than me am?” She also catches me on the use of “who” and “whom”, the subjunctive, and I’m pretty sure, from the way she looks at me, she knows if I’m intending to use the word “you” in the subjective case when it should be in the objective case.

Naturally, I’m always on the look-out for any tiny mistake she might make, but I’m not very good at it. For instance, just this weekend, she said “I gave the book to him,” and I jumped right in and said “you gave the book to Bill,” which was a lie, and so she said “who?” and I said “WHOM” (in all caps, too). She walked away.

This competition can become quite heated (at least on my part), so to diffuse a volatile situation, I throw some humor in from time to time. For instance, if she says something about having to “dye the sofa cover”, I’ll say, “no, no, you have to kill the sofa cover.”

It’s hard fighting with her about grammar, because she’s always right and I’m from Pittsburgh. Which brings up another language-related issue: pronunciation. When we first started dating, she thought I had a speech impediment. I don’t have the traditional “yinz gawn dahn-tahn to Permantees n'at” accent, but apparently I have a bit of an “inflection,” as I like to say. I have a problem, it turns out, with the letter “l” as it relates to the letter “o”, causing me to sound like a two year old just learning to speak. For instance, when I say “boy, it’s cold outside,” I’m actually saying “boy, it’s cowid outside.” The problem is, I sound perfectly normal to myself. As it turns out, I’m not “two years owid”, the house across the street wasn’t just “sowid”, and I’ve never been “towid” I remind someone of Jack Lambert. But with her gentle tutoring, my grammar is getting more betterer each and every day. My brain just needs rearranged and between my wife and I, I’ll soon be the best.

This Time I Know I’m Ripping Off Benchley

2007-02-28T21:01:00.000+01:00

My desk at work is a mess. (I always thought that my desk at home was a mess, too, but as it turns out , I don’t actually have a desk at home, just a heaping pile of unclassifiable stuff. I’m not sure what it’s sitting on, and I’m a little afraid to find out.) My desk constantly needs to be “red up,” as my Irish grandma from Homestead would say, but I never “red it up.”

There are time when I try to, about every year or so, but I usually get sidetracked by my wonder at the things I find buried among the detritus of my job. Today, for instance, I made some head-way: I recycled a whole stack of papers that were filled with red proof reading marks. I always keep these papers around, long after they are needed. I tell myself that it’s because I may have to refer to them later, just in case someone wants to know who the hell put that coma there. But I think the real, unconscious reason is that having stacks of papers on my desk, especially one scrawled all over with red marks and arrows and loopy “delete” marks, makes me look really busy.

So anyway, I actually managed to throw away a whole stack of these papers. Mixed in, though, were sticky notes. Ah, sticky notes! I use them (apparently) for everything: jotting down grocery lists, figuring out my taxes, making enemies’ lists, converting bushels to drams. This morning, I found a sticky note that contained a list that said:

paper

1500 cal.

X29435

Bistro du Coin

I can’t possibly imagine what this means, and I have no recollection of writing any of those things down. I haven’t been to Bistro du Coin in years, and I don’t recall having plans to go there recently. “X29435” might be a missile code of some sort, maybe even a launch code. Perhaps I was entrusted with it for national security reasons. Or maybe it’s someone’s extension. I thought about dialing it, but the missile code idea scared me a little (I could hear Joshua’s voice saying “Would you like to play a game?”). The “paper” may have been a reminder to buy paper, or a paper, perhaps a “news” paper (why, oh why, am I not more specific in my list making?). But combined with the “1500 cal.” I can only assume that I intended to eat paper. Quite a lot of it. Why would I do that? Maybe as a way of cleaning up my desk? I’m pretty sure I never followed through with it, though, judging by how far down in the stack of paper I found this particular sticky note.

Pondering this note used up about 45 minutes, but I managed to move on to another part of my desk, where I had a stack of sticky notes containing phone numbers. I suppose my plan was to enter these numbers into some sort of data base. The only problem is, most of the phone numbers had no name associated with them. Just the number, hastily written out in a shaky hand, as if I had been under some sort of distress. I thought about calling each of these numbers to see who answered, but the missile code idea still jarred me.

Among these sticky notes, I found another one that contained a long list of names. Next to each name was either a check mark or an X. I recognized some of the names, mostly friends. Others were more generic, like “Jim” and “Anne.” I have no idea why I made this list. I hope it’s not a hit list. That would bring up many psychological issues that are better left un-examined, not the least of which is my lack of follow-through; to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t assassinated anyone on the list, not even an anonymous “Jim” or “Anne.”

The discovery of this gruesome little list caused me to abandon my desk cleaning. I was afraid of what else I might find, especially in my top left drawer, which contains some bulging #10 envelopes. I hope they are full of money, but the chance that they might contain fingers or old cups of coffee or weapons of mass destruction or heaven knows what has left me daunted. Maybe next year.

DC’s Newest Literary Magazine

2007-02-27T16:34:00.000+01:00

The first issue of Lines & Stars has just hit the web! I highly recommend it. Lines & Stars is a brand new literary magazine devoted to great writing produced right here in DC. The first issue really showcases some great work, a refreshing literary breeze blowing through the city. And I’m not just saying that because I have a story published there (at the bottom of the fiction page).

The editor, Rachel Adams, has done a fantastic job of putting together the primier issue. There are plans to print a “3-D” version as well, which will be available in local book stores. Spread the word, submit your stories and poems, and simply enjoy the writing!

America Should Fire Margaret Spellings

2007-02-27T01:18:00.000+01:00

I saw Margaret Spellings, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, on one of the talking head shows on Sunday, and I have a question: is she related to Tori Spelling in some way? Her aunt? Mother? Sister even? And a follow-up question: did Bush nominate her because she was principal of Beverly Hills (90210) High School? Because, I’m sorry (actually I’m not), but the woman is an idiot.

She spent most of the time bashing America. Now, I’ll admit to being a liberal who, from time to time, bashes certain aspects of American society. But Peggy, what is up with you? She made statement after statement about how the American education system is so far behind the rest of the world (even though the U.S. still has the largest and most robust economy in the world and people from every country on earth come here to not only go to Harvard and Stanford, but to George Mason University and even NOVA!) She went on to say that kids in math class are bored, that we (and I’m assuming she means you and me) need to make math more interesting. What the hell does that even mean? Math is math. I don’t remember being bored in math. I remember being frustrated in math, and at times hating it, but not being bored. She must be confusing math with something else. American Idol, maybe.

But the best thing she said (and by that I mean, of course, worst), was that the days when you could make a decent living from manual labor are over. This statement could stand some pondering. It is at best misguided and at worst a wildly irresponsible thing for the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to say! The message that came across to me was that if you can’t hack it in algebra 2 and trigonometry class in high school, thus eliminating you from going to college, then your life in the United States of America is pretty much over. Just wait over there, we’ll give you some hand outs when we get around to it, and if you could please hurry up and die, that’d be great, thanks! Because if, as she says, the only way to make a decent living is to go to college, these people are shit out of luck.

Of course, this isn’t true. There are many jobs (in the trades, as mechanics of all sorts, starting your own business, even bookkeeping) where a college education is not required and you can make a very good living. Anyone who has had to hire a plumber or electrician knows how good of a living they can make. The problem is getting the training to do these jobs. School districts around the country have eviscerated their “vocational” curriculums and trade schools, at a time when we sorely need them.

Case in point: there are sections of this wonderful city where the official unemployment rate borders on 40 percent. Forty freaking percent! But there are plenty of jobs in the trades, what with all the renovation work and all the mammoth construction projects around the city. The problem is, the people in these neighborhoods don’t have access to these jobs because the city has lost the capacity to bring people into the trades; this city no longer has public trade schools. (If it does, please correct me; this is a case where I’d be happy to be wrong.) These are really, really, really good jobs, by the way, with wages between 18 – 50 bucks an hour, depending the trade, most of them with full benefits. Spellings has no idea what she’s talking about.

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education should spend her time figuring out not only how to help college-bound kids, but also how to help out the people who won’t qualify to go to college but would make great carpenters or plumbers or SAE certified mechanics or electronics repairmen, and would love to start their own small businesses doing all sorts of different things. Instead, her message to them is: there’s no place in America for you! She should be fired.

Writing: Sincerity vs. Truth

2007-02-23T14:44:00.000+01:00

“For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.” George Orwell

I find it quite surprising that George Orwell said this, the writer who told the “truth” about a lot of things. He lived the truth. He fought in the Spanish civil war against the Fascists, unlike Hemingway who did more meddling than actual fighting, or Henry Miller, who didn’t even show up. How can a writer so associated with telling it like it is (Road to Wigan Pier, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia) hold the belief that truth is not as important to a writer as some ephemeral idea like “emotional sincerity”?

The quote comes from Orwell’s 1940 essay “Inside the Whale”, an essay I consider required reading for any aspiring writer. He is actually writing about Henry Miller, the writer now considered to be a rather quaint dabbler in literary smut. Miller refused to be political, and instead wrote from a position of “emotional sincerity,” as Orwell puts it. In fact, good writing depends on “emotional sincerity.” This is what makes Edgar Allen Poe so great, Orwell says; not truth in the literal sense, but a kind of sincerity:

…there exist 'good' writers whose world-view would in any age be recognized as false and silly. Edgar Allan Poe is an example. Poe's outlook is at best a wild romanticism and at worst is not far from being insane in the literal clinical sense. Why is it, then that stories like The Black Cat, The Tell-tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher and so forth, which might very nearly have been written by a lunatic, do not convey a feeling of falsity? Because they are true within a certain framework, they keep the rules of their own peculiar world…

(I love that: “not far from being insane in the literal clinical sense.”)

During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Orwell further contends that there was a lack of good writing (prose fiction, specifically). This was because most fiction writers were involve in politics in one way or another, too concerned with telling the “truth” about politics. Henry Miller being the exception, of course:

I first met Miller at the end of 1936, when I was passing through Paris on my way to Spain. What most intrigued me about him was to find that he felt no interest in the Spanish war whatever. He merely told me in forcible terms that to go to Spain at that moment was the act of an idiot. He could understand anyone going there from purely selfish motives, out of curiosity, for instance, but to mix oneself up in such things from a sense obligation was sheer stupidity. In any case my Ideas about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney.

Orwell seems to have, shall we say, a grudging respect for this point of view.

The title of the essay, “Inside the Whale,” comes from the story of Jonah; swallowed by a whale, he is protected from what is happening in the outside world, relatively comfortable inside all that warm blubber. However, soon he will be vomited up on the shores of reality, whether he likes it or not. This stems from Orwell’s own peculiar world view: he assumed the world was quickly sliding into fascism, and that people like Miller, apolitical to a fault, would not much longer be able to stay on the sidelines. The ability to stay on the sidelines, however, is what enables great literature to be made in the first place, and why great books are rarely produced by those who vehemently believe in any sort of dogma or doctrine, political, religious, or otherwise. (Although, ironically, Orwell may be an exception.)

Good literature has nothing to do with pushing some point of view. That’s called propaganda. Good literature comes from this idea of emotional sincerity, an engagement in the things that can be known personally, subjectively. It is very hard to write good fiction (or at least get it published) at a time when political orthodoxy, whether right or left, red or blue, fascist or communist, is the order of the day:

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

What are they not frightened of? Sincerely expressing their version of reality, full of angst and emotion and humanity, even if it doesn’t fit the larger orthodoxy of the time.

I’m not sure how to go about this, myself, but I think it has to do with those nagging little voices I hear in my head as I’m writing: “what will people think if you write that? What will your grandmother think of you? Won’t people think you are a leftist/racist/sexist/socialist/capitalist/you-name-it-ist?” etc. These thoughts paralyze the creative writer.

But I think that if we write honestly, sincerely, emotionally, then we begin to approach the larger “truths” of the human condition, which is what literature is all about in the first place.

Blackberries and Airport WiFi Are NOT the Problem

2007-02-22T16:29:00.000+01:00

Blackberries and laptops at the airport don’t really bother me as much as those people you see carrying briefcases. I mean, come on! Who are they trying to impress? Do you expect me to believe that you’re carrying around briefs in that thing? We all know you’ve got your lunch in there, and maybe this morning’s newspaper. Don’t try to be all hoity-toidy because you have a job.

And then, have you seen the people on bicycles carrying around “courier” bags? Just who do they think they are? They want us to believe that someone is paying them to carry stuff from one place to another. And so I’m supposed to worship you or something? Boy, what nerve!

And have you seen these guys walking around in neckties? Do you know the origin of the necktie? The French invented it. The FRENCH! They call it a cravat (which I’m sure is what all these guys wearing them on the Metro call it, probably saying over and over to themselves “look at me! I’m wearing a cravat! Look at me!”). Do you think that French neck wear makes you better than me? Huh? Do you?

And then, then, there are these people walking around my neighborhood carrying plastic bags full of food! The bags say such things as “Safeway” or “Thank You!” and they're carrying them in such a way as to be sure that everyone can read the “brand.” The ultimate in conspicuous consumption! They probably have stuff like milk and bananas in there.

At my job, there are these people who show off by using a pen to write on paper. I’m sure you’ve seen this at your office, too. They'll site in a meeting taking notes. With a pen! What’s up with them? What do they have to prove? Ooh, look at me! I’m so important because I use a pen! They probably learned to sign their names simply to demonstrate how much above the rest of us they are.

And what about shoes. If there’s a more egregious way of putting on airs than wearing shoes, I’d like to know about it! You know the people I’m talking about: they wear them inside as well as out side, at the office, on the Metro, while driving. No calluses on those feet! Let me tell you something, you can’t take those shoes with you, you know!

So as you can see, there are so many more pretensions that one can complain about than those cute little electronic devices.

Jasper Johns at NGA: Smashing Paintings Over Students Heads

2007-02-21T16:36:00.000+01:00

The use of the word “inexplicable” in relation to Jasper Johns’ work is a waste of 12 perfectly good letters. Or so I thought, because I didn’t understand Jasper Johns’ work. I recently learned a few things at the Jasper Johns show at the National Gallery of Art. For instance, his early work was “intensely personal, gestural painting of the abstract expressionists.”

Now, that makes sense. His painting about naming colors is obviously intensely personal. Apparently, he was trying to remember the names of the colors he was using, but was having quite a bit of trouble. He kept making silly errors like using red when he wanted to use white. To make matters worse, the students in his atelier were snickering behind his back. To calm his frustration, he went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. There, he spilled coffee on his tie, and also realized that he had forgotten to put up the macaroni from the night before and it was ruined. His frustration grew into anger, and, looking to lash out at anything he could find close at hand, as was his want, he found that he had broken most of the crockery a few days before after a syrup stain sent him spiraling out of control (which led to his painting this). He returned to the atelier in a dark mood, only to find that his students, in the classic tradition of student pranks, had written in big block letters, directly on his canvas, the names of the colors he was supposed to use. This sent him into one of his famous blind rages, knocking over paint cans and smashing canvases over his student’s heads.

Not all of his art was done in the spirit of blind rages. Some of it was done in the coldly calculated manner of, say, an axe murderer. For instance, his target has an obvious message: he killed and beheaded four people (possibly students) and mounted their heads on pikes, and he’ll target you next, buddy, so watch out!

In 1962, somehow he became trapped in his atelier, and desperately tried to escape through a canvas, as this painting attests. I have my suspicions that it may have been his students (the same ones who had canvases smashed over their heads, although not the same ones whose heads were incorporated into his work, for obvious reasons) who barricaded him in a corner, perhaps in an attempt to escape yet another of his blind rages.

Referring, I believe, to this painting, Johns once commented that “a painting should be looked at the same way we look at a radiator.” The last time I looked at my radiator, hot greenish-yellow liquid was exploding out of it, stranding me on the side of the highway. This sent me into a blind rage, much the same feeling I get while viewing his paintings, further proof of Johns’ incredible genius!

It’s a hackneyed phrase: “I could have painted that,” with a hackneyed response: “but the difference is, you didn’t.” Jasper Johns is the truth behind this quip. Although, it should probably be modified to this: “but the difference is, you don’t experience enough breakfast-mishap-induced blind rages to be an artistic genius.”

Were they the Van Buren Boys?

2007-02-20T17:26:00.000+01:00

One thing that makes DC wonderful in the winter are the mounds of rock-hard ice in every legal parking space in the city. This weekend, I got the car stuck thrice as I was trying to parallel park. Once, on the downhill part of 18th Street near Florida. What a terrifying experience that was. I pulled in behind another car, and when I went to back up to straighten it out, I found the car going forward, down hill into the other car, instead of back. The more I spun the tire*, the closer I came to the other car.

I reviewed my options. I could wait until the spring thaw. I could wait until the car in front of us left, or, better yet, I could push the car in front of us into the empty space in front if it, maneuvering out of the space as I went. The other option was to enlist the friends we were with to wedge themselves between the front bumper of our car and the back bumper of the other car and push. This, off course, ran the risk of pinning them between the two, surely thinning our social circle from angry outrage as much as from debilitating injuring. After some negotiations, in which it was decided that we all would push (including me) from the side, we finally managed to move the car up hill about 2 feet. It took 15 minutes. (For you math fans, that’s .00009469695 mph.) I then proceeded to get it stuck again a few spaces further down 18th. But we decided to un-stick it, with much the same process, after dinner.

Then, last evening I got the car stuck once again on top of a huge mound of ice as I tried to parallel park. Half way in the space and half way out, I couldn’t move it anywhere. So, once again, I found myself pushing the car with my wife at the wheel. As I was cursing the city and the snow and Michelin and whoever made my shoes, four strangers walking down the street quietly helped. In about 3 seconds the car was free! I don’t know who they were (although they reminded me of the Van Buren Boys from Seinfeld), but it reaffirmed my faith in humanity and this city. Thanks Van Buren boys, where ever you are!

* Growing up as a boy in Western PA, I learned about things like limited slip differentials. (I think it’s on the Pittsburgh Manhood Test we all took in 9th grade.) Our car does not have this, which means that the wheel sitting on the most slippery ice is the one that will spin and spin and spin (and throw snow all over you as you try to push), while the other tire remains still. Cussing was invented soon after the limited slip differential.

DC’s Very Own Pasquino

2007-02-15T17:30:00.000+01:00

Residents of DC: did you ever try calling a Senator’s office, or a real representative’s office, and been told they can’t talk to you because you are not a constituent? I’ve hit upon a solution: our very own Pasquino!

In Rome, near Piazza Navona, stands a little beat up statue dubbed Pasquino. From the 16th century on, anonymous commoners would post satirical poems and diatribes on Pasquino (pasquinades) aimed at the Pope and the nobility. (As you can see from the picture, the tradition continues.) The postings were always attributed to the statue itself, and Pasquino became known as a talking statue. I’ve been thinking that DC needs its own talking statue, who would speak for the citizens of the city to the dysfunctional city government and to a Congress where we have no voice. If we can’t have voting rights, at least we can make satirical personal attacks!

I thought I’d try it out first in Coladams Circle so that the neighborhood denizens could air their grievances in an anonymous forum. However, I quickly learned that the limited population of Coladams Circle (exactly 2) made anonymous posts next to impossible, and it quickly devolved into childish name-calling. I gave up the idea.

Now I’m searching for a DC-wide Pasquino. It should be a statue of some stature, in a prominent public place where public officials and commoners alike often pass. The right “talking statue” could carry some weight in DC’s public discourse; who would NOT listen to the great figures of history? So far, here are the top contenders:

Albert Einstein, 23rd and Constitution, NW

Pro: He’s really, really smart.
Con: That doesn’t carry as much weight in politics as one might think.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Conn. Ave and M St. NW

Pro: Giant Figure in American Literature
Con: American Literature matters less in America than anywhere else in the world (including France)

Maine Lobster Man on the Southwest Waterfront

Pro: A common man with Yankee common sense.
Con: Members of Congress are terrified to leave the Capitol grounds and would never venture into SOUTHWEST!

Gandhi, Mass Ave. and 21st NW

Pro: People should listen to a non-violent idealist.
Con: People won’t listen to a non-violent idealist.

Sailor, 7th and Pennsylvania NW

Pro: I bet this guy’s got a LOT to say.
Con: Present administration doesn’t really seem to care.

Ethan Allen, U.S. Capitol Building

Pro: He carries a sword.
Con: He also hawks furniture.

I think good old Ethan Allen, due to his preferable situation inside the Capitol building, offers the most promise. I can see it now: Eleanor Holmes Norton’s staffers could sneak into the Capitol early each morning and post pasquinades received from constituents on the statue, where other members of congress would be forced to confront them!

That’s, of course, assuming the other members can read.

Napping Fights Heart Disease

2007-02-13T19:21:00.000+01:00

In some of the best news ever reported, the Washington Post ran an article about the health benefits of napping. A recent study found that “those who napped at least three times weekly for about half an hour had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart attacks or other heart problems than those who did not nap.” Napping, it seems, especially in the middle of the day while at work, reduces stress. Of course, the draw backs of napping at work include getting fired, which raises ones stress level considerably. For some reason, the healthy effects of napping were seen most clearly in men. I have empirical evidence to back this up: most of the snoring in my office comes from men, although it’s hard to tell which men. Snorers are like crickets; when you try to pinpoint where the sound is coming from, it suddenly ceases, only to start up again somewhere else deceptively close by.

(On a side note, the article also includes what is perhaps the single greatest sentence ever written in modern journalism: “It's likely that women reap similar benefits from napping, but not enough of them died during the study to be sure…”)

The test subjects were in Greece where, apparently, napping at work is an acceptable, almost expected part of the conditions of employment. Kind of like federal employment. Although here in DC, unless you are really old and a GS-15, napping is not totally acceptable. Yet. So I’m happy to see the work-place nap getting the attention it finally deserves. I’ve made a rather in-depth and personal study of the matter. I have much more research to do, but so far, I’ve found many benefits to napping, such as missing annoying phone calls, ignoring emails, and being able to stay up and watch David Letterman without nodding off. Napping also builds certain necessary bureaucratic survival skills, such as “excuse making,” (pretending your praying, saying your doctor told you to avoid eye strain) and extra sensory perception (being able to know when your boss is approaching your cube even when immersed in full REM sleep).

We still have a way to go in this country before one can snore loudly in one’s cubicle without embarrassment. But this study is a step in the right direction. I see a day some time soon when federal buildings all across the land with have “rest facilities” with low lighting, fluffy pillows, and (hopefully) fooz-ball tables. Until then, I will continue my research, ever pushing the edge of the envelope (which usually ends up stuck to my forehead.)

Rhode Island Place: A Lost Opportunity

2007-02-12T14:13:00.000+01:00

With the various home renovation projects I’ve done over the past few years, I make the trip to DC’s Home Depot quite often. And every time I’m there, I wonder about the thought process of the people who approved that whole mess. The piece of land now occupied by the shopping center is some of the best situated real estate in the city: high up, with great views of the Capitol dome, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and most of the city, it is served by Metro’s Rhode Island Avenue station, and it sits just outside of the downtown area.

Why, oh why would anyone have approved the ghastly suburban low density sprawl development that is Rhode Island Place?

By building a strip mall right in the heart of DC, we miss out on the kind of great urban development that could have happened there, that could have benefited DC with more tax revenue, and could have been done in such a way as to benefit the residents of Ward 5. Instead, we have acres and acres of underutilized land, stores, such as Home Depot, that ruin small, locally owned businesses and suck the profits right out of DC, and a suburban-modeled parking lagoon that creates traffic problems and ensures that few will ever walk there.

I suppose Vincent Orange, who, as a council member, wanted to bring economic development to his ward. (He also threw his support behind the dubious New Town development at the Capitol City Market.) But development like Rhode Island Place is actually counterproductive. (For a good discussion of all this development, check out this post on Rebuilding Place in the Ubran Space.)

The only pro I see to the development is the sales tax revenue from Home Depot that would otherwise have gone to Maryland or Virginia. But other than that, the whole development does more harm than good. The amount of wasted land up there is incredible. The city could have created a walkable, mixed use neighborhood, centered around a business district that could have supplied all the same amenities: a Giant like the one in Columbia Heights, locally owned small businesses, even chain stores, along with an urban Home Depot, if we must. They could have created community amenities as well, such as a well-situated park that takes advantage of the great views, a recreation center, a job training center. Perhaps, with such a clean slate of land and great metro and street access, someone (the city? The business community?) could have thought outside the box and created some sort of small business incubator, with affordable office space, like has been done in other cities. And, of course, a mix of market-rate and affordable housing. Instead, we got a strip mall.

The idea of economic development is to help pull people out of poverty, but low paying retail jobs do not pull people out of poverty. Empowering people to start businesses and to get job training will, in the long run, help those most in need. I only hope that Fenty will do something like this and not be wooed by all the rich and powerful developers who feed on tax breaks and special deals at the public real estate trough.

No, excuse me!

2007-02-08T16:19:00.000+01:00

Walking home last night along New Hampshire Avenue, in the freezing cold, my head hunkered down between my shoulders, I had to stop short somewhere around S Street as I came face to face with a gentleman who had suddenly turned around. He said “excuse me,” not quite in a “get away from my car you bastard!” way, but definitely not in a “I’m so sorry” way, either. I got the impression that he was somehow upset with me.

I answered with my own surprised “excuse me” and moved past him and his friend. As I did so, he commented “I thought I heard someone walking up behind me.” And by God, I reckon he had!

New Hampshire Avenue at 9 pm on any night is quite a well-lit and busy street. People walking dogs. People walking home. People going out to bars. Taxi cabs, bicyclists, police cars, garbage trucks. So why was this guy surprised that someone was walking behind him? He was walking behind someone else! Perhaps he just moved here from some terrible place where people don’t walk anywhere, like Fairfax, and was a bit over-stimulated. Or perhaps he needs to move back to some terrible place where people don’t walk anywhere. Like Fairfax. I was baffled.

I cogitated about this for a while, and I realized that it must have been my Wonkette-christened “dipshit galoshes” that I was wearing. Apparently, they give me super-human sneaky powers, allowing me to “walk up behind” people without them being aware until the very last second. I’m not sure how to harness this power yet, but I assure you, I will only use it for good and not for evil. And maybe for practical jokes.

I plagiarize the old-fashioned way!

2007-02-07T17:49:00.000+01:00

I just found out that one of the wittiest things I’ve ever said I actually stole from Robert Benchley. I make no claims that it’s the wittiest thing anyone has ever said, or even the wittiest thing that Benchley ever said, just that it’s probably the wittiest thing I’ve ever said.

A few of us were sitting around one evening, talking politics and semiotics and what-not, over a few bottles of something, and someone made a comment about the two kinds of people there are in the world. I don’t remember now who those two kinds of people were, perhaps “good” and “bad”, or “smart” and “dumb”, but most likely, knowing these half-drunken conversations as I do, it was something like “those who know what it’s like to work for a living” and “those who have just knocked over the water pitcher.”

Seeing how far the discussion had sunk, I slowly and deliberately made the pronouncement: “The way I see it, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don’t.” My comment killed. Or at least that’s how I remember it.

Just yesterday, I found out that I had stolen my pronouncement from Benchley without even so much as a footnote! I don’t ever remember reading it before. At the time, I thought I had created it out of whole cloth. Which leads me to wonder, how many other of my pronouncements, witty or otherwise, have I pilfered?

For instance, what if it turns out that last Christmas dinner, when I blurted out “God bless us, every one!” at the end of the blessing (which induced gales of familial laughter, even though I was trying to be profound), I was repeating something I might have heard or read somewhere else? What if, when my membership in Skull and Bones was rejected and I sent them a note simply, but haughtily, stating “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member, anyway!”, that I was actually committing some sort of plagiarism, or at the very least, baring my uncreative soul?

If this were true, it would mean that the wittiest thing I’ve ever come up with would be: “nanny-nanny goo-goo, I got you-you.” And God help me if the provenance of that pithy saying is called into question!

Don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows

2007-02-06T14:16:00.000+01:00

Over the winter, one of my favorite pastimes is yelling at television “meteorologists.” These people add a certain entertainment element to my life that I’d miss if I moved somewhere like San Diego where the weather is always perfect. I’m not blaming them for the cold weather, mind you, although I can’t think of anyone else who is more responsible for it. What I’m trying to do is hold them to a higher standard. Unfortunately, as I’ve learned from experience (and as my wife so frequently points out), they can’t hear me.

This morning, it was 11 degrees in DC. As I was making my coffee, I heard someone on NBC 4 make the observation that “if there is any water on any surface outside, it will be frozen.” Of course, this is the same person that they always pick to stand outside in front of a bank thermometer in the pre-dawn hours to report on just how cold it is, the same person who never wears a hat and gets the riveting footage of pedestrians walking down the street and stops motorists who invariably comment “it’s cold!” I believe they let her write her own copy.

Cutting back to the news rooms, Joe Krebs goes over a list of things you should do to keep warm: wear a coat. Wear a hat. Wear gloves. This bears no comments from me at all, except to ask, who, exactly, does Joe think watches NBC 4? Perhaps I need to change the station. I don’t think I’m a good fit.

Then there are the “average temperature” shenanigans. Two weeks ago with temperatures in the 50s, we were told over and over how our temperatures were “above average.” Now, with highs hovering around 20 degrees, we’re told they are now “below average.” The problem is (and this is a mathematical problem, so I apologize; I find using my toes helps quite a bit) that an “average temperature” is calculated (I assume) by adding up the high temperature from, say, all the February 6ths for the past 75 years, and then dividing that number by 75. Seems pretty scientific, doesn’t it? The only problem is, it may never be, and may never have been, the temperature that the resulting “average” turns out to be. In fact, there’s a good chance that there were more February 6ths when the temperature was wildly NOT the average temperature than February 6ths that it actually WAS the average temperature, rendering the idea of an “average temperature” meaningless. What good is it anyway? I don’t base any decision on how I’m going to dress or what activities I’m going engage in based on a historical “average” temperature. I’d look awfully silly most of the time if I did. (I mean, awfully sillier than I currently look most of the time.)

I’m not one of those people from a northern clime that guffaws at this region’s neurotic response to winter. (In fact, I make it a rule not to guffaw at anything. It distorts one’s features in such an undignified way.) People come from all over to live in this city. There’s no reason that someone born and raised in Florida should know how to drive in snow, just as there is no reason for someone born and raised in Pittsburgh should know how to, ah, drive in, ah, nice weather -- Okay, so people from the north are simply better drivers. But I refuse to guffaw. Anyway, we are obsessed with weather, and thank god we are. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have it to blog about!

How to Shop for Hardware

2007-02-01T20:55:00.000+01:00

I used to be embarrassed when I went into a hardware store, like some people are embarrassed when going into an adult book store. As strange, and perhaps sick, even twisted, as that sounds, it’s true. Let me explain.

Before I started doing lots of work on my house, I’d go into a hardware store looking to buy, say, a valve stem for a faucet. The only problem was, I didn’t know it was called a valve stem. Or a faucet. I figured I could find it hanging on a hook somewhere in the store, if I just searched long enough. I tried to avoid the staff as long as possible, those intimidated apron-wearing know-it-alls of my nightmares, but eventually, they would corner me, say, in the broom, massive rat trap, and tea-towel aisle, and ask if I needed help. Suddenly, I found myself using rudimentary gestures and sound effects to communicate what I was looking for. I’d start with a pantomime of turning a “sink handle thingy” and before I knew it I heard the sound “swwwwwshhhh” issuing forth from my mouth. The ensuing laughter and calling over of coworkers were enough to force me to leave in shame, my face red and my manhood impugned.

So when I discovered Home Depot and Lowes, I was thrilled! Here were these gigantic buildings where no one ever, for any reason, approached me to ask if I needed help, and even if they did, they would be just as ignorant about everything hardware-related as I was! It was like paradise! I could stagger around the store for hours, without fear of harassment, ogling a full range of hardware-type objects, without any chance of anyone making me feel the slightest bit embarrassed for my lack of knowledge.

But, as they say, “necessity breeds contempt” (or “familiarity is the mother of invention”, or some damn thing), and so, as I became more proficient with the recognition and proper naming of hardware-related items (although no more adept at their manipulation and installation), I became more and more frustrated with my formerly-idyllic big box “home center” experience. For I seemed to spend hours at these places, most of which were spent looking for my cart. (And by my cart, I mean the one that was just sitting right there, with drain opener and a sixteen foot length of shoe mold on it, that someone invariably stole! When I finally find the miscreant (often in the “tool corral” eating hardtack with the “toolboys”), I walk boldly up to the thief and say “sir” (or “madam”, or “thou” if it’s hard to tell), “I’ll ask you just once to kindly return to me what is rightly mine, the property you have so unashamedly purloined in the Building Material aisle. If you choose not to comply, I can not answer for what harm might befall you!”)

(I don’t actually say this. It took me quite a while to think it up.* I usually just snatch the cart when the person isn’t looking and run like hell, tossing away their items in random places around the store as I go.)

And so I have retreated to the places of my former embarrassments: Frager’s Hardware on Capitol Hill or the True Value Hardware on 17th, where I’ve learned not to be ashamed of my ignorance. Maybe I don’t know the difference between amps and BTUs, and maybe the mere mention of a “P-trap” makes me giggle, but I bet the hardware store people don’t know the first thing about the Hanseatic League! Not that I do, either, but it sure makes me feel better.

(*With my apologies to Robert Benchley and the Benchley family.)

New NW Neighborhood Discovered: Coladams Circle

2007-01-31T17:21:00.000+01:00

My wife and I live down the hill from Meridian Hill, not in Dupont Circle, but not quite in Columbia Heights or Adams Morgan, and definitely not Logan, and too far west for Shaw, but maybe the U Street corridor depending on the map you look at, and very near the Strivers Section Historic District but not in it, and I’m not sure exactly where Cardozo is, so maybe we’re there? It’s really hard to tell people, quickly, what neighborhood we live in. So I’ve come up with a new neighborhood name just for our condo (not our condo building, mind you , just our actual apartment): Coladams Circle.

Creating your own neighborhood opens up a world of possibilities, ranging from street festivals (Coladams Circle Day!), for which we are entitled to police protection, free balloons, all kinds of ethnic food, and some sort of frozen desert product, like Italian ice or sherbet (I think, I’ll have to check on the last one), to various city grants to help fund the activities of the newly formed Coladams Circle Citizens Association, which of course will present strong opposition to every proposal brought before the ANC, once we figure out which ANC we’re actually in.

I’d also like to apply for money to start the Coladams Circle Business Improvement District, because, let me tell you, business in the neighborhood is woeful, nearly non-existent. There’s not even a liquor store (unless you count the cabinet where we store liquor, which, I guess, you’d have to) or a Starbucks, which is surprising since we drink A LOT of coffee here in Coladams Circle. The only commercial venture making any money at all in Coladams Circle is the Swear Jar, but as our “community improvement” projects finish up, it, too, may see a drop in business.

And finally, I can now apply to the city to get free trash bags and hand tools for use during our soon to be inaugurated Coladams Circle Neighborhood Clean-up Day. The city will even send over a truck to haul all the trash away!

The only thing left is to lobby Metro to add Coladams Circle to a Metro station name. Apparently, it’s pretty easy: Adams Morgan got their name on the Woodley Park station, even though it’s definitely NOT in Adams Morgan, and both Fairfax and GMU are piggybacking on Vienna’s station (having made the trip countless times to GMU via Metro, let me tell you, you’ll be in for a rude surprise and a long, long, looooong walk if you fall for THAT one!) I can see it now: U Street/African American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo/Coladams Circle. Then, I could answer any cabbie’s “where to,” with “to Coladams Circle!”

The Hubris of a Do-It-Yourselfer

2007-01-30T17:58:00.000+01:00

My wife and I have done a lot of work on our condo (and are still doing it). What we lack in actual skills and no-how, we more than make up for in naïve, hubristic over-confidence and bull-headed oxen-like determination. These can take you a long way.

For instance, over the summer, when everyone else was enjoying weekends at the beach and nights out on roof decks holding brightly colored drinks in stemmed glasses, we spent every waking moment for 4 weeks putting in a marble floor. We learned about things called “floor leveler” and “margin trowels” and “cementitious thinset mortar”, and successfully used a “wet saw” without losing any necessary digits. Even after most people would have given up and called in the pros, we pressed on, thinking we’d be done in only a day or two more. A day or two more quickly added up.

Since then, we’ve learned why people buy new kitchen cabinets instead of simply painting the old ones (because one average-sized kitchen cabinet, with one door, has approximately the same surface area as a Coopers Mini and takes just about as long to paint), that buying materials at Home Depot takes as long as doing the actual work, and that everything takes 3 times as long as you think it should. Except for putting in baseboard (thank God for Paslode nail guns!), which took only 1/3 of the time I had allotted for some reason. I suspect I did something wrong and that I’ll walk in some time to find my baseboard has “failed”, as they say in the trades, with catastrophic results.

We also learned that people’s reactions are not up to our standard when we show off our place. No one swoons when they see our newly-installed and freshly painted built-in bookcases (all of which, of course, we did ourselves); no one breaks down in tears of unbelieving joy because of the vast expanse of wall tile we put in the bathroom. Don’t they understand that we had no idea what we were doing, and still have no idea how we did it, and that it still came out looking great? That’s a 3 piece baseboard we mitered together, people! Don’t you understand the significance of that?

So we keep laboring on, doing things we have no business doing: installing sinks and toilets and crown mold, wiring under-counter and indirect lighting, replacing “J-traps”. And we have to be content with the work’s own rewards, which so far have been callused hands, tiny but extremely painful cuts on my fingers, exhaustion, and a rather nice paint fume-induced light headedness. But, being the eternal optimists that we are, we’re sure that the rewards will get better as time goes on.

DC Crime: Philly Inquirer vs. Washington Post

2007-01-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

Why does the Philadelphia Inquirer have more insightful reporting of DC’s crime statistics than any local paper? This article from January 14 is better than anything the Post or Times or Examiner have published. It brings up points I wrote about in a post at the end of December: the economic and demographic changes taking place in DC (gentrification) helped lower the crime rate, and DC is exporting its crime problems to other local jurisdictions.

Admittedly, the Inquirer article only touches on other problems that gentrification causes: loss of affordable housing and disruption of communities, problems which the Washington Post seems to obsess over. But the article does balances its good-news story with a litany of DC’s problems: “drug trafficking, illegal firearms (in a city that bans handguns), reluctant witnesses, and a steady flow of ex-cons returning to the streets.”

The Philly piece also presents some fascinating statistics, which our hometown papers weren't able to dredge up during their coverage of the drop in the DC crime rate:

In DC, “the number of men ages 18 to 24 - those mostly likely to kill or be killed in any city - has fallen by a third in five years, according to those same estimates. This has come as Washington's overall population has grown.”

And “the District has about 80,000 more jobs than it did in 1998, the region 500,000 more.” In that same time period, Philadelphia lost 15,000 jobs.

These numbers beg some questions: where did all the young men go? Who has taken all those jobs? Near the end of the article is this paragraph, something similar I’ve never seen in any local paper:

“Even in some of the toughest neighborhoods of Washington, police say, young people now grow up knowing lots of adults who have succeeded in legitimate careers, not through drug dealing. So officials and activists can preach the value of staying in school and out of trouble without fear of sounding ridiculously out of touch.”

Is any of this true? Well, considering the Philly paper has no dogs in DC’s political fights, which are boiling over with issues of gentrification, race, class, and crime, it’s probably more or less objective and therefore trustworthy.

Maybe DC is doing better than it was when I first moved here, not just for those with money, but also for those less fortunate. Maybe some of those 500,000 new jobs went to people in our poorest neighborhoods, and Mayor Williams’ ideas of economic growth were correct. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for good news.

Hemingway on Writing in the Morning

2007-01-26T04:01:00.000+01:00

"When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again..."

"Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail."
--Ernest Hemingway

I used to do this. Actually, before it was light, just as the sun was coming up, in my bedroom in my little house on Oakland Street in Arlington. I need to do this again. It's a good way to write. I felt energized the whole day. That early, I didn't even know what I wrote until I looked at it the next morning. And then, I didn't remember it again because it was so freakin' early! Eventually, I had all these pages of manuscript, good stuff, created by me, but somehow magically. The editing and rewriting I could do in the light of day. But the writing, in wee-hours.

Why I love DC

2007-01-24T17:36:00.000+01:00

There’s a lot of negativity out there about DC. People love to hate DC: the politics, the egos, the police, the city services, the dating scene, the crime. The hate comes from people who live here (there are plenty of local DC-hating bloggers) and from people who don’t, as this Post article illustrates. I could go on for some time about this article, but why bother? For the most part, the writers are striking poses: down-homey-straight-talker, exasperated tax payer, etc. None of them, of course, know the first thing about the DC we live in. And they mostly complain about the politics, not realizing that real people live in DC, too.

Usually, when I tell people from somewhere else that I live in DC, they invariably ask “where?” I’ll repeat, calmly, “Washington”, having heard it all before. And they respond “no, I mean, where exactly? In Arlington? In Alexandria? I have a niece in Bethesda. Do you live in Bethesda?” When I explain that no, I actually live in the city of Washington, they say, sympathetically, “oh, I’m sure that’s nice, too.” I even had someone say “really? I didn’t know anyone actually lived in Washington. Well, except for, you know…” I didn’t ask for further clarification.

There’s a lot of hate out there. I try not to let it bother me. People are generally ignorant, and that’s not their fault. I love DC because I know it, the great architecture, the food, the bars, the monuments, the museums, the book stores, Springtime. I have friends here. I met my wife here. We even ate at Ben’s the day we got married.

But I’m also a realist: I’ve gotten crazy tickets for things I didn’t even know you could get a ticket for (a public space violation? What the hell is that?) I’ve torn my hair out dealing with the building permit office and the zoning office: they do Kafka proud. There’s the terrible customer service at CVS, the lines at the DMV and at the one car inspection station, the complete randomness of what the garbage collectors will and won’t take, the motorcades that disrupt everything.

However, even with all this, DC retains a humanness: if you talk to them nicely enough, the cops at your local police station just might give you a temporary parking permit for a month, instead of a week; the woman behind the register at The Market Lunch once took change out of her own pocket to pay for my crab cake when I was 50 cents short; the adjudicator of my “public space violation” ticket waived it on a technicality, basically because I was clueless as to why I even got it. We’re all in this together, these people seem to believe, in this big, senseless, crazy city, and we gotta help each other out.

I guess loving DC is like loving a big, dysfunctional family. I can complain all I want, but I’ll close ranks with my fellow Washingtonians (even city workers) when someone from outside insults DC.

Capital City Market/Florida Market

2007-01-23T17:47:00.000+01:00

If you’re interested in development issues in DC, and you’re interested in a great place to get fresh produce, check out the new Capital City Market blog. It’s hosted by Richard Layman, who has another blog about urban development, and by Inked, who writes Frozen Tropics, another great blog about urban spaces and DC. They’ve been kind enough to post my recent Current Newspaper article about the Capital City Market on the new blog.
I love this city because of places like the Market and blogs like these.

A DC Fashion Statement

2007-01-22T18:57:00.000+01:00

DC has the reputation of having terrible fashion. And with this tiny bit of snow, I can understand why. Out come the child-like footwear worn by so many federal workers (and some non-feds as well, I’m sure): strange lug-soled shoes, Timberlands, old sneakers, or full-on hiking boots, worn with business attire. I’m not sure where these people are coming from, or how they are commuting to work (by dog sled, perhaps?).

It’s not so bad, I suppose, to wear such shoes on the rare occasion of actual snow. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people wear such shoes, or athletic shoes of one strain or another, nearly every day. Or “soft” dress shoes, like my mother used to force me to wear to Catholic school: rubber soled, leather (maybe) that won’t polish, ugly.

I graduated from all such footwear for professional dress years ago. I now only wear “hard soled shoes,” loafers and such. I live in the city, I work in an office, and I’m a grown-up, so I dress like a grown-up. But I see so many middle-aged men who work in offices just like mine dressed like they are off to Sister Angela’s class. I half-expect that they are wearing tough-skins and clip-on ties as well. Why don’t grown-ups dress like grown-ups? I have the requisite collection of Birks and flip-flops and hiking shoes and Sambas, but I don’t wear them to work!

I have loafers that I’ve worn for years, and they are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. I’ve worn them to both Paris and Rome, where I walked miles and miles a day, without any discomfort. And I wear them all around DC, all the time. So I was thrilled when my brother bought me a pair of rubber galoshes for Christmas, the kind you slip right over your shoes. These things are terrific! They are the SUV of city footwear. No more dancing over puddles or refusing to go out in the snow, or, worse, wearing Catholic school shoes to the office. Now, I just walk jauntily along, anywhere I please, in any weather. I suppose I’m an anachronism. My wife thinks I may be Highlander, as my actions and my ability to recall arcane historical facts belie an chronological age of well over two hundred and fifty years. Rubber overshoes may have gone out with the rotary telephone and sock garters, but I say that quality and usefulness never go out of style!

Notes on PEN/Faulkner, Gimmicky Writers, etc...

2007-01-17T17:24:00.000+01:00

We went to see E.L. Doctorow on Friday night at the PEN/Faulkner reading hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library. I like the PEN/Faulkner reading series. As it turns out, however, I don’t like E.L. Doctorow’s writing. He’s part of a generation of American writers who are taken very seriously by critics and English professors, and are also commercially successful. Writers like Don DeLillo, Tom Wolf, Tom Robbins, and John Irving. They all suffer from the same problem: they write about stuff that they want us to believe is profound, but when it comes right down to it, is either trite, not insightful, or totally lacking in meaning.
For instance, Doctorow read a short story narrated by a man who had joined a cult. While smoothly written, the story had very little to say. It ends with the cult leader running away with all the cult’s money and the narrator’s wife. Oooooo, cult leaders are immoral hucksters! What a revelation! Never saw THAT coming! The problem, of course, with this conclusion is that, not only doesn't it add anything to humanity’s understanding of the universe, it’s actually, well, wrong. Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Marshall Applewhite, all died with their followers. What Doctorow wrote was what all we non-cult-followers wish to believe about cult leaders: they don’t actually believe what they preach; they are simply greedy con artists, when in fact the evidence proves otherwise.

Other examples of what I'm talking about: Tom Wolf makes the earth-shattering revelation in I Am Charlotte Simmons that college-age women HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE! Who knew? No one born in the last 40 years would be shocked by anything that Charlotte does.

Don DeLillo ends the prologue of Mao II with this: “The future belongs to crowds.” This sentence is so utterly devoid of context, concreteness, and even a peripheral relationship with meaning, that one may think that it must therefore be DEEP, so deep that I, with my tiny intellect, just don’t get it. In fact, it’s simply bad writing.

“Gimmicky” is the word I would use to describe all these writers. They pick something that has a particular hold on the popular imagination: cults, gangsters, girls-gone-wild, abortion, hippiedom, and then deliver exactly what their audience expects.

Regarding my own writing: Last week was a good week here at aportablesnack: my work poem was picked up by Wonkette, my post about DC Restaurant week was picked up by The Express, and someone actually posted my poem on Joel Auchenbach’s blog page. (By the way, poems are supposed to be grammatically incorrect!) Plus, I finally recieved a copy of my article about the Capitol City Market that was published on December 13 in the Current Newspapers (Georgetown Current, Dupont Current, Foggy Bottom Current, Northwest Current). Unfortunately, it’s not posted anywhere on-line. And finally my friend arjewtino was picked up by Gridskipper. A precedent setting week!

Twenty-somethings: Greedy and Shallow

2007-01-11T14:45:00.000+01:00

For Shame USA Today. What a piss-poor reporting job!

USAToday reports that a new Pew Research Center poll (which USAToday co-sponsored with McNeil/Lehrer Productions) finds that Generation Y’s “top life goals are to be rich (81%) and famous (51%).” Implying, of course, that 81% Gen Y'ers have getting rich as their number one goal. When I read this, being a few years older than Generation Y (people born since 1980), I felt a surge of moral superiority course through me: how shallow, I thought. How naïve. How stupid.

But then I read the actual poll question: “Which of the following do you think people in your generation or age group think is MOST important…” The choices were such things at “to get rich,” “to be famous,” “to be leaders in their community,” etc.

Anyone see a problem here besides me?

This question is not asking what is MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU, it is asking what you THINK is most important to EVERYONE ELSE. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

People generally assign negative motivations to other people. I would probably have answered the question the same way: getting rich is the most important thing to most OTHER people in my generation; not for me, mind you. I want solve world hunger, help old ladies across the street, and feed little fuzzy animals. But no one else does.

Sorry, Gen Y'ers. I apologize for jumping to conclusions. It seems to me that Pew Research Center and McNeil/Lehrer Productions and USAToday have some sort of agenda to smear Generation Y. Probably because they are run by people like me, who think negative things about other people and love surges of moral superiority.

DC Restaurant Week: Mmm...Bad Food

2007-01-10T14:01:00.000+01:00

I told my wife we should participate in Restaurant Week. Not as diners, mind you. But by offering a prix fixes menu and setting up folding tables in our living room. Because, let me tell you, she’s a better cook than most chef’s in the city. Especially during Restaurant Week. (Let’s face it, most chefs participating this week are at the tops of their games.) That, along with the long waits and shoddy service, and I know we could do better than most!

Good food doesn’t have to be expensive, anyway. Sometimes it is. And sometimes you can spend 10 bucks on an entire Peruvian chicken (plus steak fries and slaw) and actually look forward to dying in a car accident on the way home, because you would be sure to die happy. Good food is good food. It’s just that so few people know what it is anymore, and assume that if you pay a lot for it, you’re getting it. So here’s a list of my favorite non-Restaurant Week food in DC:

Best Thai: The Old Siam on Capitol Hill. Not expensive, great service, incredible food, just simply a well-run place.

Best Italian: AV Ristorante Italiano, New York Ave and 6th Street NW. Serves wine in stemless water glasses, huge portions, unpretentious. They simply know what they’re doing.

Best hotdog: Ben’s Chili Bowl (of course)

Best Burger: Five Guys. Nothing more needs to be said.

Best Falafel: Amsterdam Falafelshop, Adams Morgan. Ditto.

Best fried pork, pupusas, and tamales: Tortilla Café at Eastern Market (not to be confused with Tortilla Coast, also on the Hill). They serve on Styrofoam plates here. I’d crawl over broken glass for the fried pork.

Best food, ever, anywhere, period: El Pollo Rico, North Kenmore Street, Arlington: I think they put crack in the chicken. I’m serious. Because there’s no way that chicken, steak fries, and coleslaw can be this good.

Work Songs (and poems)

2007-01-09T18:12:00.000+01:00

I’m not much of a poet, as I will soon prove. But I have been known to write poetry now and then, usually about my place of employment. Usually AT my place of employment. I don’t know why, but I seem to be inspired at work to wax poetic more than anywhere else.

However, the resulting poems end up as thinly-veiled rhyming diatribes against my cubicled fate. My experience writing these poems has led to the following syllogism:
(1) the best poems are funny; (2) complaining is funny; (3) rhyming is funny; (4) the modern American cube farm is funny. Ergo, a rhyming poem that complains about work is bound to be funny.

So here goes. I wrote this years ago when I worked in a tiny cube for a huge on-line company based in Tyson’s Corner, where my job was to cancel user accounts on the night shift. Interesting people worked the night shift. (I’m sure they said the same thing about me.):

Ode to a Lung Fluke

Sometimes I hate to go to work
knowing that is where you lurk
with you horrible disease
that no coughing will appease.
What is it that effects your lung?
What is it that is in there clung?
A fluke, maybe, that makes you gasp?
Or do you just prefer a rasp
to any other horrid sound.
Think you it the most profound?

I hear you cough up god knows what.
It makes me sick right to the gut.
Then see you in the dining hall
spit a large phlegmatic ball
into an unconcealed rag
which you display as if to brag,
“look what I expectorate!
Perhaps I’ll fling it on your plate!”
It fairly makes me want to puke.
Please extricate that god damn fluke!

I wonder at your mental state
when you can’t articulate
even simply to say “hi”
as a coworker walks by.
You scare me, to be plain and clear.
Some day I expect to hear
Your name broadcast to all the land
because you snacked on someone’s hand,
or liked your food prepared the best
when freshly torn from human chest.

Or maybe you will gain your fame
by practicing your rifle’s aim
on old coworkers who may have said
something about your unclear head,
meaning only to sympathize
with your constant running eyes
and a nose that does the same
I did not mean your mind lame!

When you finally do crack
Please don’t lay it on my back
or take out any undo stress
on one who every sneeze did bless.
That constant clearing of you throat,
I know there was an antidote.
Annoying was the only word,
that I ever overheard,
used in reference to you
but never from my lips it flew.
I was always well aware
from the nature of your stare,
that you might pull out a gun
and then kill me just for fun.

Ugly Betty Ford?!

2007-01-04T19:56:00.000+01:00

The other night, we were watching President Ford’s state funeral at the Capitol on ABC. When the funeral was over, after an hour of seeing former first lady Betty Ford moving through the rather rigid ceremony with dignity and grace, we suddenly see this flash up on the screen:

Who at ABC thought THAT was a good idea? It wasn’t “cut to commercial,” then a local news break, then a wrap-up from the funeral. Not even a cut to “This has been an ABC news special report” voice over. Instead, it was pretty much a final shot of Betty Ford being escorted from the rotunda, and then HUGE PINK WORDS that said “UGLY BETTY” for a LONG TIME. Like 5 or 8 seconds, longer than seemed necessary for any reason. Was I the only one who noticed this?

Networks re-program all the time depending on current events. Maybe moving Ugly Betty wasn’t necessary, but a little bit of a segue perhaps?

Book lists and such

2007-01-03T17:07:00.000+01:00

Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. - William Faulkner

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions how he makes lists of everything. He wonders if he’s strange. When I read that, I thought “Wow! I’m not the only weirdo out there!” I make lists of many things: to-do lists, lists of people I know, lists of trips I’ve taken (noting next to each one whether it was by car, plane, train, or a combination), lists of cities where I’ve spent the night.

I used to keep lists of all the books I read in a given year. I’d write down the date, the title, and the author. I don’t know why I did this. I didn’t record what I thought about the book. It was simply an accounting sheet. I averaged 30 to 40 books a year. I sometimes wish that I still kept such a list, but I don’t read as much as I used to. So here’s a list of most of the books that I read this year:

The Coast of Chicago, by Stuart Dybek
Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Monkey Wrench, by Primo Levi
The Families Who Made Rome, by Anthony Majanlahti
The Comedians, by Graham Green
Flappers and Philosophers, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Between Salt Water and Holy Water: A History of Southern Italy, by Tommaso Astarita
Kavanagh: A Tale, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Writer’s Paris, by Eric Maisel

Rereads:
A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Harvest Moon, by Carl Sandburg
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving

Boy, that’s barely a book a month! How pathetic. New Years Resolution: stop making lists.