Remain vigilant as you exit this building

The Metropolitan Police Department has sent a warning to early tech adopters (like, say, folks picking up the new iPhone 4S this week): Don't make yourself a target. Or, as they put it in a release, "be cautious when making electronic purchases, particularly on days of new releases, when popular devices and gadgets are being sold for the first time." They also include a list of tips:

1) If online tracking systems, like MobileMe, are available, get the extra assistance in the store for setup before exiting the store.

2) Don't be distracted as you exit local cell phone stores and other electronic specialty stores that sell these items. Be deliberate as you exit these stores, concealing your purchase(s) and focusing on getting to your next destination. Cell phones and other music devices are major distractions when in use.

3) Report suspicious people (inside and outside stores). Inside, (these are people who are paying more attention to the purchases being made, rather than checking out new products), especially in smaller stores. Outside, suspicious people standing at or near the exit, for no real purpose should be reported.

4) Try to shop with a friend. Most victims who report crimes that involve snatching new products are people who have shopped alone. If you have an elderly or senior citizen parent, please make preparations to accompany him/her to make these kinds of purchases or suggest online ordering.

5) Never hesitate to point out suspicious activity or people to local officers or security guards. Remember the "See Something, Say Something" campaign and dial 9-1-1 if you need an officer dispatched to your location.

Photo by blakespot via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

Bank Busted: Feeding families who can't afford to keep enough food on their own tables was a difficult job before the economy collapsed. But these days—with more and more people in the region needing to turn to food banks—it's gotten even harder. The Capital Area Food Bank says it'll have to start charging member agencies a fee of 10 cents a pound for fresh vegetables, in order to offset higher fuel and food costs. Fortunately, Congress is ready to step in and make things better... er, wait, no, Congress is actually considering cutting $800 million from federal food assistance programs. Never mind. -3

Plug In: Electric vehicles are supposed to be the wave of the future, but for now, few people drive them—and few people know where to charge them. Add one charging spot to the list, though: Union Station opened a power outlet for the no-emission cars today. Drive into the station's garage, pay the regular parking fee, and you can charge your electric car all you want. Too bad the movie theater in the food court closed, or you'd have somewhere to go while you waited. +1

Play to Win: The D.C. Lottery wants to make sure people know how to play its new online gambling—er, sorry, gaming—site when it goes live later this year. So they're going to let you practice. Two new wager-free games will debut on the lottery's website, iGaming, late next month. No word on when Apple's Steve Jobs will buy the name, forcing the lottery to start over with its branding. +1

Oh, Canada: The dominion to our north is best known as a hockey powerhouse, not a soccer stronghold. But don't tell D.C. United, which now has two Canadian national team stalwarts on its roster: United traded for five-time Major League Soccer all-star midfielder Dwayne DeRosario late yesterday, doubling its Canadian quotient (injured defender Dejan Jacovic is the other). Brandon McDonald, a defender, also came to RFK via trade yesterday. Might this year be the first since 2007 for United to make the playoffs? +2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: +1 Today's Needle rating: 47

You Can Dance If You Want To: Future scholars of social movements may well look back on May 2011 as the month it became safe to dance. Because up to now, the U.S. Park Police arrests of dancers at the Jefferson Memorial was merely a funny story; all of a sudden, it's a political protest. More than 1,500 people have signed up on Facebook for a public dance-in next weekend, protesting the original arrests and this weekend's second round, which was also a protest of the first one and the court ruling upholding it. We just hope the jail storage facility has room for all those toe shoes. +2

Melt With You: Free advice for the White House or any Democrats hoping to put climate change deniers on the defensive: Schedule some hearings for this week. Record high temperatures swept the D.C. area today and are expected to stick around. Last summer, which broke all kinds of heat records, there weren't consecutive 95-degree days until late June; if this keeps up, going outside at all in August will be seriously ill-advised. Of course, the weather on any individual day doesn't have anything to do with climate. But since that point seems lost on the likes of James Inhofe, no reason not to take advantage of the confusion. -3

Stop the Presses: Along with mayoral advice on keeping pets cool, the heat wave managed to break the media. Power outages rolled around the vicinity of North Capitol Street, shutting down the CNN Washington bureau and Roll Call, where staffers were unable to edit or lay out the next issue of the paper. If such mighty news organizations can be brought down so easily, we fear for Howard Kurtz. -1

Think Different: The stereotype of the BlackBerry-addicted Hill staffer checking email from the bar late at night (mostly in a misguided attempt to impress fellow bar patrons with how important the staffer is) may soon have to change. Not too much, though; mobile email is still as popular as ever in D.C. It's just now it's increasingly likely to be Gmail, read from an iPhone. Don't expect to see Apple using images of federal bureaucrats in its marketing any time soon, but if footage of President Barack Obama using an iPad surfaces in Cupertino, Calif.-led ad campaign, it'll be a sure sign that his reelection bid is going pretty well. +1

Friday's Needle rating: 62 Today's score: -1 Today's Needle rating: 61

In trying to abide our New Year's resolutions (see No. 7), we didn't mention a thing about Metro's  10-cent fare hike yesterday! So: here, now, are a few links, in case you want to read someone else's reporting on this. OK, just one link. Plus, a bonus Metro cartoon.

Can you bear to read any more about the iPad? Apparently, the Japanese company Fujitsu in 2002 launched a device it calls the iPAD—it's a mobile hand-held thing used in the retailing world to check prices or verify inventory on the spot. According to Masahiro Yamane, director of Fujitsu’s public relations division, "It’s our understanding that the name is ours." And they're consulting their lawyers.

Note to Apple: Let them have the name!

In other news, Osama bin Laden is mad about climate change, and the Johns Hopkins University student who killed an intruder in his Baltimore backyard a few months ago with a samurai sword will not be charged.

But now to the passing of J.D. Salinger. Let's look at a bit of the coverage. The New York Times offered several stories, including a good old-fashioned obit, the kind with a 66-word lede. It is the Old Grey Lady, after all:

J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

GQ's pop culture blog went with something a bit edgier: former City Paper staffer Mike Riggs' recounting of a road trip he took (mostly stoned) to Salinger's house:

A man on a small motorcycle wearing a yellow hazmat suit took me to J.D. Salinger's house when I was 21 years old. Two friends and I had been driving around Salinger's mountain for a full day, and we were exhausted, irritable, and hopeless.

But the prize goes to The Sun (the U.K. tabloid), which really got the mood just right:

THE legendary novelist whose cult classic The Catcher in the Rye inspired assassin Mark Chapman to kill John Lennon has died.

RIP, Jerome David. And happy Friday.

Both schools of thought have valid points. To wit:

The "Bands Are Its" Argument

The word band is singular. Saying "Collective Soul are playing the 9:30 on Aug. 27" is as ignorant as it is a sad statement of fact. Collective Soul is a band. The band is playing on Aug. 27. It would be incorrect to say "Only a group of people with unfashionable tribal arm-band tattoos are going to the Collective Soul show at the 9:30 on Aug. 27." The antecedent is not the plural noun people, it is group, which is singular. QED.

THE PROBLEM: Some bands have inconveniently plural names. To say "The Fiery Furnaces is playing the Black Cat on Aug. 8" is to create something almost as difficult to listen to as the new Fiery Furnaces album. So this rule requires a big honking exception: "The Fiery Furnaces are playing"; unfortunately, "the band is out of ideas." It can look odd to have both forms of address in one article.

The Bands Are Theys Argument

People write sentences like "Widespread Panic are opening for the Allman Brothers Band on Oct. 6 at Merriweather Post Pavilion" because people say "Widespread Panic are opening for the Allman Brothers Band on Oct. 6 at Merriweather Post Pavilion." It's unnecessarily stilted for a publication that doesn't address people by "Mr." or "Ms." on second reference to sound so stuffy. Moreover, consonance reigns in your music section. All bands are theys.

THE PROBLEM: Why should the music section follow different rules from the rest of the publication? Because musicians lack unfashionable tribal arm-band tattoos? "Apple are releasing a new iPhone?" "The government are declaring war?" Asinine! (INTERESTING SIDENOTE: In the United Kingdom, many ostensibly singular entities are referred to as plurals: "PARTICK Thistle have found a unique way of topping last season's headline-grabbing pink kit – by launching a new away strip in camouflague." Then again, the story misspells camouflage.)

My feeling:

Platform agnosticism is underratedoverrated [DOH! WISH I'D HAD A COPY EDITOR LOOK AT THIS]. Just as there are features that work better online and features that work better in print, the way you talk and the way you write can be different. Anyone who's ever heard me stammer through an interview would probably agree! I say option 1.

Gwyneth Paltrow, when asked by MTV UK if she had any advice for Two Lovers co-star Joaquin Phoenix regarding his fledgling hiphop career, responded, "[G]o live in the projects for a few years to get some authenticity, maybe."

Wonder if she'll offer that same wisdom to kids Apple and Moses should they ever want to follow in "Uncle" Jay-Z's footsteps.

Attention local urban sophisticates! You will not be able to visit an Apple Store in the District of Columbia anytime soon!

That scoop comes courtesy of the underappreciated, under-Webbed Current newspapers, which explained in last week's editions [PDF, see pp. 1 and 19] that plans for the District's first Apple Store are held up in a thicket of regulatory approvals, from the Georgetown advisory neighborhood commission and the Old Georgetown Board.

Earlier this month, both bodies rejected Apple's design—the third the company had submitted for the property at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. NW, a Georgetown storefront the company has owned for more than a year—because, as the Current's Carol Buckley puts it, it "would not fit into Georgetown."

Nay, not even this testimonial, delivered by an Apple project manager, can cut through the red tape: "Steve saw this design and really loves it."

That's Steve Jobs, people. Steve Jobs!

When will you hoity-toity bureaucrats wake up and realize that when Steve Jobs loves something, that means you must love it, too?

The Current describes said design as such: "a glass first story with a solid stone upper facade punctuated by a large window shaped like Apple's logo." The Old Georgetown Board, charged with preserving historic preservation standards, "felt that the design turned the building into a billboard," according to a spokesperson. The ANC, charged with being parochial nitwits, raised concerns that the latest design was "too modern."

What are you missing out on, obstructionist Georgetowners? Well, as the Washington Business Journal put it in 2007, you're missing the "one retail store that any town, and any developer, covets above all others. A store with such cachet that any retail center blessed enough to land one becomes instantly certified as a platinum-level shopping mecca, with clientele who are urbane, savvy and have loads of disposable income."

Georgetown, though, does not covet thy neighbor's urbane, savvy, income-disposing customers—got plenty of those already.

So suck it, Jobs! Shoulda gone to Chinatown!

Flickr photo by ping ping