Weekly special at the Red and the Black: A shot of whiskey and a haircut, a steal at twelve bucks. Last Tuesday, that sounded pretty good to my friend and I: He was in the market for a haircut; I was in the market for a drink.

Turns out, we weren’t alone. By the time we arrived at the bar, around nine, about ten names were already on the waiting list for the bar’s solo stylist. It was clear that getting into the barber’s chair before close was going to be a long shot, so we decided to knock back a few beers and then cut our losses.

Still, my friend wasn’t ready to abandon his search for an inebriated shearing. Why go to a bar to get a drunk haircut when you can BYOB on your lunch break? Yesterday afternoon, my friend headed out to Mario’s Barber Shop at the National Press Building–with a shot-sized bottle of Jack Daniels in pocket. “I poured the airplane bottle into the end of my Diet Coke and downed it before heading downstairs to Mario’s,” he says. “I realized later that I could have gone to the bar upstairs and actually gotten a shooter. No matter.”

Unlike at the Red and the Black, this drunk cut came with zero wait time. “The guy who looked like a Mario was engaged,” my friend says, “but his associate was wide open. I sat down, and within less than 20 minutes I was out the door with a very solid haircut.”

One downside: Your own tipsy cut can come at a significant markup from the Red and the Black’s Tuesday offering. My friend ended up shilling out nearly 30 dollars for his: Three bucks plus tax for the Jack, 20 for the cut, and a fiver for tip. All in all, “having a nice buzz while getting a haircut is a very pleasant experience,” he says. “Just like having a buzz and doing anything, I guess.”

“I’ll be returning for my next haircut in 3 or 4 months,” he adds. And the booze? “It depends how busy I am that day.”

When I moved into my new apartment last summer, I found that it came stocked with some sweet goods: Futon. Toaster. Lamps. It also came with this baby: the iTouchless Trashcan.

This trashcan opens and closes its lid by sensor.

You don’t even have to touch it!

At first, the can was just mildly unsettling–it seemed an unneccessarily futuristic intrusion in our household. Plus, it had the tendency to go on the fritz: At times, the lid seemed to open and close indiscriminately; at others, you’d have scan your banana peel over the sensor a couple times before iTouchless would grant you access. Now, the batteries are dead and we’ve lost the lid to hold the new ones in. We’re forced to pry the lid open with our hands like commoners.

There’s only one reason you would buy this for somebody: You want them to look like a total asshole.

Aaron Leitko was one of the finest employees City Paper ever had, and we miss him every day now that he’s left to tour-manage the Australian group Love of Diagrams. I used to go to Starbucks with Aaron from time to time, but it wasn’t till our most recent visit up there, on his last day of work, that I noticed him do something that has rocked our relationship forever.

After Aaron stirred his milk or whatever into his coffee (drink. it. black.) he redeposited his wooden stirrer in the stirrer container. I was alarmed and pointed out to him what I was sure was an absent-minded mistake, but no, Aaron believes that throwing out a wooden stirrer is an environmental crime (more so than working at a newspaper, apparently). Anyway, if you aren’t too jazzed about adding the residue of some young bohemian’s morning brew to your half-caf, and you live in one of the following cities, by all means, go and see Love of Diagrams. But maybe wait till you get back to work to add your milk.

Nov 2 Glass House, Pomona, Calif.
Nov 3 The Echo, Los Angeles
Nov 4 The Casbah, San Diego
Nov 6 Emo’s Jr., Austin, Texas
Nov 7 The Proletariat, Houston
Nov 8 Chelsea’s Cafe, Baton Rouge, La.
Nov 9 Club Downunder, Tallahassee, Fla.
Nov 13 Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta
Nov 14 Duke Coffeehouse, Durham, N.C.
Nov 15 The Rock and Roll Hotel
Nov 16 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia
Nov 17 Knitting Factory, New York

In October, the District’s Department of Public Works posted signs on our street changing our pickup days for garbage. We went from a Monday-Thursday thing to a Tuesday-Friday thing. Kind of a demotion, considering that garbage tends to pile up at our place over the weekend, thanks to lots of partying. But that’s nothing to really gripe about.

However, the signs didn’t address the issue of recycling. Before, I’d put the recycling out with the garbage on Thursdays. But the signs didn’t say that the recycling day would change. So last week I put the recycling out on Wednesday night, and it stayed there all the way through Saturday, no pickup to be had. I finally gave up and brought it onto the front patio after some guy eating a hard-boiled egg dropped his egg shell into it.

I brought it out again last night and am hoping it’s empty by the time I get home.

If not, I’ll take it in again tonight, and then take it back out tonight. With each passing day, it bulges a bit more.

And if I find that the recycling truck did indeed come by today, that’ll mean that I have three days of garbage/recycling service each week. I have a feeling I’ll quickly lose track of which nights I have to drag the buckets out front, and which nights I don’t. So I’ll just go out there every night no matter. Just before brushing my teeth, taking a piss, and hitting the rack.

On my daily MARC train trip to Baltimore last Tuesday evening, I fell into a head-hanging, drooling sleep so deep I nearly missed my station. By the time I reached home, the fever was on, and I was deep into my worst flu bout since elementary school.

Like a good worker, I called in sick on Wednesday, Thursday, and again on Friday, to spare my coworkers from my germs. After six days, countless cups of ginger tea, a quarter bottle of Tylenol, and the second season of The Wire, I was back on the MARC Monday morning, hoping I wouldn’t spook my fellow commuters with a coughing fit.

I shouldn’t have worried. Although I did let out a few raspy coughs into my handkerchief, the final notes of my sickness were nothing compared to sniffling, sneezing, and full-on hacking of many other riders. A bearded man a few rows ahead of me coughed for so long, I feared he would pass out. The train car rang with sickness all the way to D.C.

It’s going to be a long, germy winter for commuters. Have the rules changed and it’s now all right to go to work with a serious cold or even the flu? If so, I propose we follow certain Asian countries where the polite person with a cold covers his mouth in public with a hospital mask. At least on the MARC train.

Radar magazine, ever-vigilant on the culture, entertainment, and style scenes, brings its readers this bit of top serious news: Wowzers, a beer in the shower sure is refreshing, ain’t it?

Maybe it’s just the booze talking, but who the hell doesn’t occasionally drink a beer or six in the shower? Whether it’s to cool off after exercising, get a head start while preparing for a night on the town, or stave off a wicked Tuesday morning hangover before trotting into the office, a beer in the shower isn’t some eccentric practice or “secret pleasure” as Radar would have you believe—it’s a goddamned necessity in this cruel game known as life. Hell, in my dilapidated group house, we keep a separate recycling bin in the bathroom just to collect all of the empty shower beer bottles. Is this not the norm for any self-respecting 20-something group house?