Don’t you eyeball me, you ding-dong robin!

I don’t know if it’s out of stupidity or some strange, wild nobility, but I’ve got to hand it to the robin red breast: under no circumstances will you see those cross-eyed gingers eating people food.  And it isn’t as though they couldn’t get away with it.  They can run faster than the starling, which crosses pavement in a stooped, arthritic manner which suggests a perpetual fear of hip injury; they can overpower sparrows, which have the attention span of a stale hamburger bun; and they can certainly out-fly those blasted pigeons, which lumber through air with the grace of a damaged B-52 bomber.  So they should have no trouble at all consuming their fair share of the half-eaten pizza mashed into the gutter in Adams Morgan on a Sunday morning.

Yet what do they do?  Continue reading “Don’t you eyeball me, you ding-dong robin!” →

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Great, here’s another new hotel project… Coming soon to AdMo, U St., & the Olde Post Office

The Post yesterday threw up a video of a typically ebullient Donald Trump pimping his vision for the Old Post Office Pavilion, which someday, perhaps even soon, will transform into “one of the great hotels of the world, if not the best.” As always, Trump’s aiming high, and the Old Post Office building certainly looks the part of a dowager peeress in need of a facelift.  I haven’t been in there in a couple of years, but I recall that the payoff for enduring an out-of-place security check at the entrance was essentially two levels of a suburban strip mall wrapped around the site’s central atrium.  If you’re looking for MSG-infused foodstuffs, cut-rate souvenirs, and treats for tour groups wilting from the August sun, today’s iteration of the Old Post Office is just the spot for you.

So, yes, I applaud GSA’s effort to spruce up the place and Continue reading “Great, here’s another new hotel project… Coming soon to AdMo, U St., & the Olde Post Office” →

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Who do you trust? Uncle Sam or Wall Street? The Street’s got better leaders, methinks…

Don’t argue politics and public policy with your parents.  Just don’t do it.  I don’t care what Chris Keener thinks, his gut-busting film on surviving political chatter and bridging the child/parent, liberal/”conservative” divide notwithstanding.  (Click the link, it’s a must-see for those who fear the home-front for purely ideological reasons.)  I mean, I appreciate the spirit of the film: who, in a vacuum, doesn’t believe that he can have a reasonable discussion with his family, say, on the proper role of government?  Watch as Chris, with calm, unassailable argument, swats away the Fox-y assertions of his entire family (also played by Chris!) while simultaneously preserving amity – comity? – around his Thanksgiving table.  It’s a page right out of the Change We Can Believe In handbook, 2008 edition. Continue reading “Who do you trust? Uncle Sam or Wall Street? The Street’s got better leaders, methinks…” →

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Here’s hoping for a fully doped Tour de France…

One of the downers of being American is our rather inward-looking attitude toward sport, a fixation on all games deemed “indigenous” while dismissing, outside of elitist circles, international pastimes that enjoy an overwhelming worldwide following.  It’s taken a few decades, but after some false starts, it seems that my countrymen have finally accepted soccer (if only in the begrudging manner that most humans accept death).  While this development might be credited to the realization that soccer isn’t just for undersized girlie-men, my transformation was fueled by the discovery that very attractive and talented women also toil on the pitch… and win World Cup championships!  (You hear me, Sunil Gulati?)  Everyone loves that, right?  U-S-A!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

But now that Major League Soccer is pretty-well established – so much that even David Beckham has signed up (again!) with the adolescent league – the elites, living strong on the lingering fumes of Lance Armstrong-mania and backed by a proliferation of sports networks, have of late been shoving cycling down our throats. Continue reading “Here’s hoping for a fully doped Tour de France…” →

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OK, this one might get me in trouble… Thoughts on Komen vs. Planned Parenthood

Ah, remember Inauguration Day, 2009?  Your dear correspondent spent the run-up trapped in the now infamous Purple Tunnel of Doom, only to be turned away from the Mall just minutes before noon, when our new president – so “articulate and bright and clean” – would take the oath of office and smite all partisanship, bitterness, and polarization with his first mellifluous utterance.  Goodbye, culture wars!  Goodbye, gay- and abortion-obsessed special interests.  We gonna be dealin’ with real problems now!  War!  Recession!  Energy!  Real transformative shit!

I totally wanted to believe. Continue reading “OK, this one might get me in trouble… Thoughts on Komen vs. Planned Parenthood” →

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So… Maybe tax evasion is okay?

I’ve always cackled at the “right-to-work” provision preventing non-union workers in union shops – those who otherwise receive union-negotiated pay and workplace benefits if not direct union support – from paying union dues. So let me get this straight – you get to enjoy most of the benefits of being in a union, but without actually paying for it?  Sign me up, brother! It’s like stealing a high-speed wireless signal from a neighbor too stupid to password-protect his router – a can’t lose proposition!

So it is, now, in Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels has just signed a right-to-work bill into law.  I’ll leave it to others to either lament or praise the bill on economic grounds, but the logic of the dues provision always strikes me as absurd. Continue reading “So… Maybe tax evasion is okay?” →

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