This topic may be a bit unseemly, and I’m usually too apathetic (except, maybe, about foie gras) to start a movement, but someone has to say it. Ladies, you gotta stop this hovering over the toilet bullshit. Get your quad workout somewhere else. You hoverers are the ones causing the problem. You’re the ones splattering all over the seat. Leave aiming to the men. Sit down. The backs of your legs can’t pick up diseases. If everyone sits down, then the seat stays clean. Let’s work together. Let’s sit.

Umbrellas: Useless. A good one might, at best, keep your hair dry. Assuming there’s no wind. Just saying.

I’m not a regular reader of Esquire, but I was checking out the home page and was excited to see a tab for The Best Bars in America. This is slightly misleading because of the democracy the mag allows in its choices; there are bars listed for every state (even Puerto Rico!). So what are the best bars in D.C.? The winners are…The Tune Inn and Hawk ‘n’ Dove. Cue sinking heart. Really, Esquire? Really? You can’t see past Capitol Hill and khaki pants? You refuse us the D.C. culture that exists beyond politics? Go north! Go east! We have literary-themed bars (St.-Ex and Bar Pilar) and freak-inspired bars (Palace of Wonders) and classy bars (ESL and Dragonfly ) and classic bars (Tabard Inn and Old Ebbitt) and on and on. I don’t think you get us at all, Esquire.

Earth Day is coming up. I totally support Earth Day. But not when it comes to my theater program. Some friends and I went to see The History Boys at Studio Theatre over the weekend. (Definitely worth seeing, by the way. They’ve extended the run through May 18, so go buy tickets.) Shortly before the play began we realized we had no programs. Nobody had programs. Upon questioning, one staff member said the lack of programs was Studio’s way of observing Earth Day. I appreciate where they’re coming from, but I want my freakin’ program. I paid for that program. I’m happy to give it back at the end of the play, but I want to know about the play. I want to know who the actors are. I want something to fiddle with if I get bored. So thank you, Studio, for thinking of the environment, but give me back my program.

Washington Gas is making bad service into a form of art. Since November, they’ve sent me two bills every month–one for me, and one with my name on it for the nice lady who lives in the apartment upstairs. She and I verified that it’s her gas bill by checking the meter numbers on the two bills and comparing them to the numbers on our meters. Right after I moved in, she says, Washington Gas sent her a refund check and discontinued her direct payment program. She was baffled.

I’ve explained the problem to Washington Gas call-takers five times. On Mar. 12, after several calls from me, my upstairs neighbor, and even the management company, Washington Gas sent a guy to check the meter numbers. He confirmed the mix-up. I figured that had to be the end of it, but yesterday, I received my neighbor’s bill once again. Like the last two, it says DISCONTINUANCE NOTICE on it. It’s for over $1,000 and there’s no way for her to pay it.

Washington Gas is just hell bent on sending me my poor neighbor’s bill. It’s Theatre of the Absurd over here. It’s like something from a play by Samuel Becket or Harold Pinter. It’s crazy! I explained the problem to a Washington Gas call-taker again yesterday–now I’m escalating the situation with public whining.

I beseech you, teeming millions of City Desk readers, for suggestions on how to solve this problem.

UPDATE 4/9/08: An alert reader forwards me a Mar. 16 Baltimore Sun story on similarly-bad service a Prince George’s County deli owner received from Washington Gas this year.

UPDATE 4/10/08: A woman from corporate communications at Washington Gas called my neighbor and me last night to apologize and say the problem would be fixed. We’ll see…

In Sunday’s Post Magazine, Tom Sietsema wrote a cover story on the increasing noise problem in restaurants. The result is that he is going to include noise ratings along with his reviews. Personally, I don’t get it. Here’s why:

1. Yes, there are loud, busy restaurants, and there are quiet, intimate restaurants. The ambience is already touched on in the review, so why do we need to know exact decibels?

2. How do you give a restaurant an average rating? Price range is easy to give, noise range is not. The noise level changes drastically depending on the night of the week, the hour of the night, the distance from the bar or a large group, etc. I don’t see how one can say a restaurant comes in as 70 decibels.

3. What in the world are restaurants supposed to do? They already are padding/cushioning/draping things all over the place, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough for people. Really, the “problem” is that D.C. is becoming a great place to dine. And restaurants are slammed. And people make noise. This reminds of my itty-bitty hometown in Pennsylvania. The older folks in town complained that kids had nothing to do and were getting into trouble. After a stroke of brilliance, they built a movie theater. Then they started to complain that kids were loitering on the square outside the movie theater. They shut the theater down.

I say welcome the crowds, welcome the noise, and if you want a quiet evening, cook dinner or order takeout from a nice restaurant.

An ongoing chronicle of douchebaggery on the road

Hey, idiot. Yeah, you—the one behind the wheel of 5,000 pounds of steel on 18th Street NW. Come here. There’s something I want to say to you.

No, come closer. It’s a secret. It’s an important secret meant only for you. Are you ready?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOU!

OK, I lied. It’s not a secret that just about every person who drives a car in Our Nation’s Capital is a fucking dumbass. And my ALL-CAPS “Fuck You” isn’t meant only for you, either. It’s for every stupid prick who bought a Hummer to compensate for a tiny dick, every soccer mom who traded in her mini-van for an Escalade, and every compact SUV owner who thinks buying a hybrid makes them less of a piece of shit. Fuck you, every last one of you.

Oh, what’s the matter? Do my words hurt you? Are you upset? Are you furiously typing away a defensive comment right now telling me what a great driver you are, how you need that Ford Escape because every once in a while you buy a big piece of furniture at IKEA, or that you picked up that 4×4 option not out of vanity but because you never know when you’ll feel like getting a little off-road action in through Rock Creek Park while chugging some Coors Light?

Well, dumbfuck car-owner, go for it. And, while you’re at it, P.S.: Go fuck yourself.

And do you know why? It’s because you suck. Try walking through the city for a change instead of spending a million spacebucks on gas each month for the privilege of sitting in traffic while the rest of us get to and from work in less time than you do. Do you know what you’ll see at EVERY FUCKING INTERSECTION? An asshole running a stop sign. Another idiot making a right turn on a red light without stopping. Some dipshit accelerating into a crosswalk trying to beat a pedestrian. “Oh, look at me! I’m an important person driving a tank and I can’t be bothered with civilians trying to cross the street!”

You don’t believe me, because you’re too busy being an asshole in your car, honking at people like the prick that you are. But if you were to get your fat, lazy ass out of your automobile and take a nice stroll or bike ride through town, you’d see drivers such as yourself endangering the lives of pedestrians at every goddamned intersection in the city. It’s true.

So it is for you, the stupid car-owning resident of Washington, D.C., that I write this blog entry—as well as those that will inevitably follow it as I continue to be almost killed by stupid shits such as yourself during my daily 10-minute walk to work. No, no—don’t thank me. Thank the batshit crazy driver of the silver Nissan Pathfinder who refused to stop at the crosswalk on Columbia Ave. Road NW in Adams Morgan even though I was in the middle of it. Thankfully, he wasn’t going fast enough to prevent the big fat fucking loogie I hocked up from landing right in the middle of his rear passenger side window.

Yeah, that’s right. I spit on your fucking car. Deal with it.

Lately, it’s seemed as if Entertainment Weekly has decided that since it couldn’t break celeb news faster than blogs, it would become a place where pop culture was chewed over, which would at least explain all those wretched how-I-grew-up-loving-James Bond-movies/The Big Lebowski/horror-films essays that have been polluting its pages of late.

But if there was one thing you could always count on in Time Inc. publications, it was superior copy-editing. Which is why I’m at a loss upon reading this, in Benjamin Svetkey’s Speed Racer article:

Judging from the advance footage, Speed Racer is a family film alright, but a family film that missed a couple of doses of Ritalin.

Forget the tortured simile. What made me vomit in my mouth a little bit was the spelling “alright.” Goddammit, that’s two words! ALL RIGHT! It’s in the bloody dictionary. Real dictionaries, not the fun little pretendy online ones where you can look up slang terms!

From Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition:

al•right (ôl rit) adj., adv., interj. disputed sp. of ALL RIGHT

That’s right, disputed! As in, the theory of evolution is disputed. BY DUMBASSES!

From Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition:

usage The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing <the first two years of medical school were alright— Gertrude Stein>.

“[I]t has its defenders”: They’re called ILLITERATES! Or British journalists, which is practically the same thing. The battle over this dumb usage has been lost in Blighty; I’ll be damned if I’m gonna cede the colonies without a fight. To quote Free: All right now!

Using proper grammar is important. But there is a time and place for calling someone out on poor usage. Like in school. Or maybe at the dinner table with your children. (Go ahead, comment on my use of fragments.) There seems to be some strange correlation between people who love dining and people who hate bad grammar—to the point where they feel they must comment on it in a chat. This often happens in Tom Sietsema’s Wednesday dining chats. Here are some snippets from this past week’s chat:

Investing:”a debate between my husband and I”?
No, “my husband and me.”
Arrggghhh.

re: No, “my husband and me.” : thank you, that’s one of my pet peeves.

Washington, D.C.: Not necessariuly for the chat, more for you:
“one of my favorite places to whet my whistle…” You “wet” your whistle, i.e. lick your lips to make it possible to whistle. You “whet”, i.e. sharpen, a knife.

What the hell? (And, yes, there is a typo in that last one.) Why do people do this? Here’s my theory of about five minutes: Eating is a base act. It’s a necessity. It’s about survival. And no matter how much you dress it up, the whole physical process is pretty unattractive. Some people have an insecurity about this and feel they must overcompensate and prove they are not just animals. They must prove that they are thinking people. They must make catty grammar remarks. Am I way off on this? Any other theories?

In a story about Prince George’s County’s emergence as the top producer of basketball talent in the country — Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, every worthy Hoya and scads of other blue chippers came out of PG — I called the county “Ward 9.”

That’s a nickname for the county I’d heard forever — it’s been showing up in City Paper stories for at least 13 years. But a reader going by “Mos82″ ranted in the comments section that nobody who actually lives there dares use “Ward 9,” and that referencing the county as another DC neighborhood is insulting.

I meant no disrespect. But, a simple Google search would have revealed that Mos82 ain’t the only one bothered: The Urban Dictionary calls “Ward 9″ a “derogatory reference” to PG.

I thought PG enjoyed being thought of as part of the city: I don’t remember hearing any county natives complaining about the Washington Redskins, Washington Capitals, Washington Bullets using the city’s name while calling PG home.

And even one of the top AAU teams mentioned in the story, the PG-based DC Assault, wears its ties to the city on its chest.

But it appears I was wrong. So, why so touchy, county people?

A young woman I’m acquainted with just started a Facebook group dedicated to outing her ex boyfriend as a lying cheating bastard. It’s called “I hate *** ***” and has five members so far. Now the scorned lady seems to have some good reasons for being upset with the guy in question, also an acquaintance of mine. He went on an exotic vacation with an ex, lied about it, reunited with the current girlfriend and then posted pics of the steamy trip (clear water, bikini, frolicking) on, you guessed it, Facebook.

She explains:

So, look I know this group is ridiculous and immature and really classless, but I just cannot get over how unfairly this ended. I am over ****, I’m just not over the disrespect, you know?

You don’t have to actually hate *** to join this group cause let’s face he is pretty adorable and he is pretty great to go to a party with.

The only intention of this group is that *** maybe has to endure a couple of awkward conversations. Like what if a bunch of people went up to *** and were like “You got [scorned lady] pregnant? What the fuck?” That would be a pretty fun conversation.

Anyway, yeah, I think there is beauty in the breakdown and I kinda’ just want to see what life is like if I live totally impulsively. Good things come from bad situations right? And, besides I am about as dramatic as it gets anyway. Me and Britney…

Yeah, well. I think only bad things can come from this situation. It isn’t very nice and it could lead to even less nice developments, for *** and the rest of us. If I were a lying, cheating bitch, I certainly wouldn’t want to be called out on the internet. What about false accusations? Maybe *** is really innocent. I think this is the bad ending I feared from another Facebook group scandal in Portland, Ore. My friend Beth wrote an awesome story about a group, called “Morgan Shaw-Fox is a Piece of Shit Rapist.” It concerned a student at Lewis & Clark college, who several people suspected of being a piece of shit rapist. Problem was, they didn’t go to the police first. Some of my friends thought the group was a good idea, a viable choice in a society where women’s claims of rape often don’t stand up in court. And that’s a good point. But I really, really think the whole rule of law thing is still more important. Right?

We learn from Philebrity - via Doree - that the National Main Streets Conference, in Philadelphia, will include a seminar entitled, “Understanding the Hipster.” To wit:

What is a “hipster,” precisely? We struggle to understand these peculiar sorts — with their deliberately-unkempt look, their ironic t-shirts, their embrace of dead beer brands, and their Elvis Costello-like glasses. But it is critically important that we do so, given their willingness to pioneer neighborhoods, their role in setting trends, and their importance to the “creative class” economy. In this fun and interactive seminar, the speaker, who counts many hipsters among his friends, demystifies this vital psychographic, describing how they think, what they want in a neighborhood, how they spend their money, and much more.

I wonder what “interactive” means. Maybe fun games like picking out the best Elvis Costello glasses. Or how to tell an ironic t-shirt from a cheesy t-shirt.

The seminar’s leader, Michael J. Berne, sells himself as an expert in “ethnic, socio-economic and psycho-graphic “niche” markets.” He seems to have specialized, in part, in bringing chain stores to low-income urban neighborhoods. I found this charming quote in a blog about citizen concerns about steamrolling development.

“Let’s not romanticize mom-and-pops; the honest truth is some of these businesses do not deserve protection.”

This little gadget has some DC gun ban opponents all giddy. I’m not particularly anti-gun, but this seems a bit on the retarded side.

This afternoon, Charlotte Allen came online to have a little chat about last week’s op-ed. (The Post also just posted this great rebuttal to Allen’s piece, penned by Post legal administrator Caitlin Gibson and actor/writer Rachel Manteuffel).

The obvious winner was this question, posited toward the end of the chat:

Anywhere: Hey, Charlotte. Nice tits. Sincerely, a guy.

Charlotte Allen: Hey, Washington Post forum moderators: I thought obscene comments were supposed to be filtered out of this forum? How did this one get in?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday’s Post has an interesting op-ed piece by Charlotte Allen asking why women are so good at screaming, swooning, crying, raising children, and decorating homes, and so bad at doing math, driving, and running for president. So, how dumb are women? A better question: How dumb is Charlotte Allen?

(image via D.C. Fashion Week)