Yellow Line in the direction of Huntington, Oct. 13, 11 p.m.-ish. (Click to enlarge.)

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For the barely current issue of City Paper, I wrote about the Georgetown Hoyas’ new t-shirt shooter, called the T-Shirt Gatling Gun.

Who cares that the team is slumping? The few seconds it takes for the multi-chambered air rifle to fire a couple dozen shirts into the stratosphere are worth a trip to the Verizon Center.

Before encountering the Hoyas’ toy, I don’t think I’d heard the phrase “Gatling Gun” since high school history class. (I’m a product of Fairfax County schools, where civil war minutiae gets treated like breaking local news. )

But, as any military buff would be aware but I hadn’t a clue, the Gatling Gun never went away as an implement of destruction.

And now, in fact, it’s really in vogue.

Apparently, Barack Obama’s escorts carry a Gatling Gun with them, just in case.

Here’s footage of the presidential firepower in action.

Prepare to be scared. No, really.

Now that the Britney Spears of national elections has gone back to Wasilla, we as a culture are back on the real thing. And she knows it. And she’s coming to Verizon Center March 24 (via the Examiner).

I admit to sitting through most of Britney’s MTV docudrama this week (brought to you commercial-free and sponsored, oddly enough, by Curious, Britney’s perfume). As it turns out, Britney unplugged and shilling herself by showing us how tortured she is to shill herself: not all that fascinating. However, Britney, the embodiment of grits-eating Barbies? Totally somewhat interesting. Tickets pre-fee go from $39.50 to $128. Who’s going?

Sometimes I hate to admit it, but I love college football. I grew up in Nebraska. It was all we had really. So even though I’m old enough to know better, I still spend way too much time obsessing about the Cornhuskers. This Saturday offered ample proof.

The football team was playing the Kansas Jayhawks in a Big 12 North contest. To most casual college girdiron fans, the game had all the sex appeal of a Colgate vs. Furman match-up. Not for me. Fox Sports Net was offering the game via pay-per-view, but as far as I could tell, I couldn’t buy it on Comcast, so I started calling sports bars. I’ve been down this road before. I’ve been told at least three other times that a certain bar would carry the game, so  I would dutifully drive there, order a beer and some grease, only to find out that, oh sorry, they don’t have my game after all. It really pisses me off.

On my third attempt to find a viewing spot on Saturday, I got a hold of the Green Turtle, a sports bar in the Verizon Center. The woman on the phone said they would have the game. I asked if she were sure. She said yes; they carry FSN and all its games. I emphasized that this was a pay-per-view game, not a regular FSN game, and I really emphasized that it’s a long way for me to drive there. She told me not to worry; they’ll have it.

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