As part of the, um, celebration of something the folks at Homeland Security call National Preparedness Month, the feds will unveil their plot to use beloved Sesame Street characters to keep youngsters afraid, very afraid.

The program, called “Let’s Get Ready! Planning Together for Emergencies,” will feature Grover and other trusted Sesame Streeters explaining that youngsters should make sure their families have discussed what to do with “any type of critical situation” and that they all “strategize to confront emergencies.”

The specifics of “Let’s Get Ready!” will be disclosed at a press conference this morning at Tyler Elementary School in Southeast. Meryl Chertoff, wife of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Rosita, a Hispanic character on the kids’ show — turns out September is also Hispanic Heritage Month, and, besides, we want our children of color frightened, too — will lead the proceedings.

Devious as the government scheme surely is (Grover, how could you?) this make-sure-the-kids-are-terrified strategy is hardly new.

When I got to Westlawn Elementary School in Falls Church about 40 years ago, teachers made us hide under desks or get on our knees with face down on the floor and our hands over the back of our heads in the hallway once a month, which was plenty enough to get us to all grow up knowing the Commies were going to bomb us into oblivion.

Those routines are about the only thing I remember about elementary school.

The biggest surprise I found while looking into the Clean Indoor Air Act, an anti-smoking bill which will limit lighting up FedExField this season, was that the Redskins didn’t get their way: State and county regulators say Dan Snyder’s been told that he has to comply with the law and that his building will be treated just like every other building. The Redskins had successfully lobbied lawmakers to get FedExField exempted from previous smoking bans.

The littlest surprise, meanwhile, was that the Redskins haven’t let the law get in the way of their sales pitch for club and suite tickets at the stadium.

And the whole thing reminded me of my favorite pro-smoking tune of all time.

Andrew Beaujon’s nostalgic anti-Soviet post has me looking around every corner for America vs. Russia artifacts. Today, one of those artifacts found me. I saw a cyclist wearing a Street Fighter II shirt at the intersection of Euclid and Champlain. The back of said shirt depicted the ultimate early ’90s, fictional Cold War match-up: Guile versus Zangief.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Street Fighter video game series, Guile is one of America’s finest: a blond flat-top sportin’, dog-tag-wearin’, camouflagin’ Air Force pilot. While Zangief (pronounced either Zang-eef or Zan-gef, depending on your hometown arcade’s geographic coordinates) was (and still is, though the character no longer schmoozes with a Gorbachev look-alike during the game’s story scenes) every American child’s worst Soviet nightmare: 6-foot-5, 300 lbs., with a mohawk, mutton chops, a body covered in scars, red high-top leather boots and a tiny red posing thong. Guile’s signature move is the “Sonic Boom,” and Zangief’s the head- (and soul-) crushing pile driver.

True lovers of the Street Fighter series spend all of their free time (and, it would seem, disposable income) at the few arcades that still host the game, but with the U.S. setting up missile defense shop in Poland, and Russia sending even more tanks into Georgia, now seems like the perfect moment to bring the SNES classic—and the anti-authoritarian mentality that motivated its protagonists—back to mainstream play.

For this week’s S&T, I spoke to Bill Duggan, owner of Adams Morgan anagram bar Madam’s Organ. Since 2000, Duggan’s been sparring with the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration over the issue of occupancy in his bar: ABRA said he was limited to 99 patrons, the number of seats on his restaurant license’s certificate of occupancy; Duggan contested that he could pack up to 393 patrons in, his fire marshall approved capacity. Earlier this month, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in Duggan’s favor.

This isn’t the first time that Duggan has dealt with issues of occupancy. For the past decade, Duggan and Madam’s Organ have organized a beach trip for area kids to Dewey Beach, Delaware. Each year, Duggan takes 20 to 40 District kiddies, along with 10 to 15 adult volunteers, for a weekend of bonfiring, crab-hunting, and beach-housing.

Dewey Beach didn’t always like that. “The second year of the trip, I was arrested for disorderly conduct,” says Duggan. “I made sure to tell the local [authorities] that the kids were coming, and they said it would be fine. They said ‘Hey, this is 1999, not 1969.’”

But Duggan says the beach cops were ready and waiting to kill the party. “Sure enough, there they were, hiding in the bushes, waiting for us,” he says. “They didn’t like having a bunch of black kids on the beach … The beach cop, he was like the leader of the Aryan nation: starched shirt, blonde hair, white eyebrows. He kicked us off the beach.”

That’s where Duggan’s pint-sized occupancy issue comes in: “Technically, the permit said only 25 kids at the bonfire at one time. And we had 35. But they were coming and going! Some were playing on the beach, others were at the house; they weren’t all at the bonfire at one time.”

But unlike the D.C. Court of Appeals, the beach cops didn’t buy Duggan’s maneuvering. “They put me in the paddywaggon,” says Duggan. “I said, ‘Fine, but the kids are coming with me.’”

After a brief lock-up and some negotiation, Duggan was released to continue spearheading the kiddie beach adventure. According to Duggan, the experience didn’t put a damper on the kids’ summer trip. “Oh, they loved it,” he says. “They kept shouting, ‘Mr. Duggan! You got locked up!’”

Photo by Charles Steck

You’ve Been Warned: The D.C. Police Department put up another crime camera–at 7th and H Streets NW. [This is kinda old news--it happened last Friday]. This brings the total number of crime cameras to 74.