Here is our old op-ed friend David Brooks, who has turned a lovely shade of Holiday Orange, talking about the sexy night when some old Republican senator was just putting the moves on anybody within old-man groping distance … even David Brooks!
Which Republican senator had his hand on David Brooks’ Badonkadonk all night, under the banquet table? An easier question might be, which GOP politician isn’t playing grab-ass with other men under the banquet table? Oh and this nice teevee lady a) calls Brooks a day-drunk, and b) says that while his column is nothing special, his brief appearance on a cable-news chat show was just super. [YouTube/MSNBC via tipster "Gary L."]
This is the dashed off letter I wrote to my congressmen. Most of y'all are out there in the working world, but if you still have student loans hanging over your heads, think about writing your congress people. I could have written it better I suppose but I felt getting it sent was more important than perfection. If you can improve on it, please do.
And with that, good night!
I recently heard about the bill currently under debate to eliminate private lenders from the federal student loans system. I have to say that I completely endorse this change. Please support this bill.
Last year I left the workforce to attend medical school. Since I am supporting myself, all of my tuition and living expenses come out of loans. I spent hours sifting through seemingly identical loan packages from various banks only to then wonder all year whether my choice would still be in business by the end of my studies. At the end of the year I received a letter saying they resold the loan to the US Dept of Education.
As a student, I would MUCH prefer to deal directly with the government and not undergo the uncertainties of private banking, which seems to only be in place to earn a year's worth of interest at the expense of myself and the government. This system needs to end and it can end now with your support.
It's time for the 2009 SFBG Best of the Bay readers' poll. We made a pretty good showing last year, including winning "Best Dance Club". Let's see if we can do that again, shall we? Categories in this year's poll that are applicable to DNA and our alumni include: "Best Overall Bar", "Best Cocktails", "Best Dance Company", "Best Dance Club", "Best Rock Club", "Best After-Hours Club", "Best DJ", "Best Burlesque Act", "Best Local Blog", and (oddly buried way at the end) "Best Bar".
I've changed the calendar pages a bit, and added links that makes it easy for you to add an event into your personal calendar. It handles iCal and Outlook (they're actually the same) and also Google and Yahoo calendars.
| It looks like this now:
Add this event to your calendar:
· Apple iCal | It used to look like this:
|
Most other sites tend to hide this stuff under a +Share box that does a Javascript popup filled with a bunch of "Nascar badges" for the various sites. I'm not sure if that would make this more clear, or less. I'm guessing less.
Annoyingly, the API for getting events into the Google calendar won't take URLs that are more than 705 bytes long, so I had to truncate the event description on that kind.
You can also subscribe to our full calendar feed in most calendar programs, of course, but this lets you put events in your personal calendar à la carte.
Let me know if you find any problems with this stuff, or have suggestions.
I keep making the assumption that if we make it easier for people to electronically tell their friends and stalkers about their plans, this will translate into more bodies through the door. It's hard to tell if it's working.
Remember yesterday when I asked everyone to "fan" the DNA Lounge Facebook page so that I could set a user name on it? Well, it turns out that they only let you set user names on pages if you already had more than 1,000 fans last month, so the fact that we have more than 1,000 now doesn't matter to them. Oh well...
There's also an interview with them from the same show, which is pretty terrible, but I note it only because at around 1:30 and 4:24 in the interview clip you can tell that they're sitting upstairs in the lounge, and that the bricked-over windows on the back wall have glass in them, and are painted black! I had forgotten that they used to look like that.
This is from a local public-access music video show called "Post" that I remember watching. They seem to have shot a lot of shows at DNA. Many of the truly ancient clips I've found have come from there. I wonder if it's possible to get DVDs of this show somehow... With a name like "Post", it is, of course, completely ungooglable.
Tonight through early August: If you’re a fan of musical theater, inappropriate sexual innuendos, failed pop icons, or ’80s hits, and you just LOVE when underdogs triumph over adversity, you should catch Spring Awakening or The Color Purple at the Kennedy Center. Both shows have won numerous Tony awards, so regardless of your feelings toward musical bildungsromans or American Idol, they’re worth checking out. [Kennedy Center] (more…)</li>
aggravatedWell, the cat on the floor suddenly rolled onto his back, grabbed the sofa cushion hanging over the side of the sofa, and proceeded to drag himself along the floor upside down by shinnying along the cushion with his claws. Then he reached the end, let go, rolled back over, and ran off into the kitchen. I think this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen him do, even beating out the time many years ago when he insisted on running up and sticking his head through the slats of a venetian blind no matter how many times I pulled him out and shooed him away.
I didn't realize he was that hard up for entertainment around here. I guess I should start leaving the TV on for him or something.
DC is the capital of many things, not just Virginia. For instance, it’s a major destination for senseless violence, and it’s also a “must-visit” for any tourist looking to snag a little “Capitol Hill Dome,” in exchange for a crack pebble. Yes, this is a miserable place. But sometimes — not often, but now and then — something magical happens. Like when three transvestites mug a woman, and then use her credit card to buy panties at Victoria’s Secret. Oh wait, this happened in Fredericksburg. Never mind. [Washington Examiner] (more…)
- Allow us to pin a ribbon to your tunic, DCist, for you have displayed great diligence in your endeavor to obtain pictures of the Real World cast, pictures you probably lifted from Alex Kozinski’s website, but whatever. Just remember: you may have won this battle, but the website with the first photographs of a Love Sack wins the war. [DCist]
- Zounds! Not all red-badge-wearers are Hill interns! Some are “unshaven” contractors that make “at least twice as much” as staffers do. Wasn’t Blackwater disbanded? Scandal! [Spotted: DC Interns AND CONTRACTORS]
- A question for the bookworms who took AP Soviet History in high school: What did Stalin do just days before ordering his ice-axe assassins to murder FDR? If you answered, “He closed all the golf courses,” you get college credit. Get outraged, Montgomery County! [Washington Examiner]
- Bike Harassment. It’s real. [Holla Back DC]
Thursdayington, July Nintheth. Sky Princess Peggington Noonington, famous to children for her sparkling, weekly collection-of-paragraphs in the Wall Street Journal business pamphlet, looks at the Street, 100 miles beneath her Park Avenue Penthouse. She seeth seven Motorcars velocitating through an Intersection of Roads, but no Mexicans. (One time, Peggy Noonan saw a Mexican.) Seven, an odd number: it meaneth, “Tonightington, I disliketh Sarah Palin, the Wolf-Childe, in my Writings of Politick.” Snort ye line of pepper and typeth, Peggington, for those who dareth Read.
Which is to say that Peggy Noonan’s column this week “makes fun of Trig Palin for having Down Syndrome,” in Internet jargon — in English, this translates to “criticizes Sarah Palin.” It’s a feisty, determined Madame we have this week. Perhaps, as scholar David Denby would put it, Peggy Noonan is a woman and Sarah Palin is a woman and one does not like the other, because of Vaginas?
So terse today, anywho! More Brooklyn than Britain, one might sayington, w/r/t the two places Peggy Noonan was born, simultaneously:
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. “I’m not wired that way,” “I’m not a quitter,” “I’m standing up for our values.” I’m, I’m, I’m.
In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.
More (-ington):
What she is, is a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits.
“She’s not Ivy League, that’s why her rise has been thwarted! She represented the democratic ideal that you don’t have to go to Harvard or Brown to prosper, and her fall represents a failure of egalitarianism.” This comes from intellectuals too. They need to be told something. Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College. Richard Nixon went to Whittier College, Joe Biden to the University of Delaware. Sarah Palin graduated in the end from the University of Idaho, a school that happily notes on its Web site that it’s included in U.S. News and World Report’s top national schools survey. They need to be told, too, that the first Republican president was named “Abe,” and he went to Princeton and got a Fulbright. Oh wait, he was an impoverished backwoods autodidact!
America doesn’t need Sarah Palin to prove it was, and is, a nation of unprecedented fluidity. Her rise and seeming fall do nothing to prove or refute this.
“The elites hate her.” The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.
“She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.” She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.
“She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes.” She shows your cynicism.
“Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues.” Mrs. Palin’s supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this? Maybe they think “not thoughtful” is a working-class trope!
“The media did her in.” Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it’s arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they’re perfect in every way. It’s yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.
BAM BAM BAMMINGTON, SMACK, you’re nuts, Noonan, you’re nuts! Ha ha ha such an awesome column; too bad she will get sued by Meg Stapleton, on Twitter. THE CHILD HAS SPECIAL NEEDS, PEGGY.
A Farewell to Harms [WSJ]
- Music:Matt Loper -- RMS Remix
- BARACK OBAMA WILL KEEP DICK CHENEY SAFE FOREVER: Government teat-suckler Dick Cheney is such a pussy that he became one of the first — if not the first — vice presidents in history to accept Secret Service protection after his reign of terror in office expired, a move requiring the president’s authorization. Cheney then ran around Washington going on teevee everyday saying that Obama wanted Americans to die, constantly. Now Barack Obama has extended Cheney’s Secret Service protection, so YOU’RE WELCOME, you crazy vampire. [US News]
What enemy of America is Nobama meeting now? Oh, just former Nazi Youth and New World Order socialist Joseph Ratzinger, Italy’s latest “bad pope.” How lousy is this pope? He even let Chicago Muslin lady Michelle Obama inside His boys-only clubhouse! [CBC]
Here’s what’s happening: a bunch of hippies inspired by the Nobama campaign are giving up consulting and corporate law to become Progressive Activists and Organizers, at least until the recession passes. They are enrolled in something called “New Organizing Institute Boot Camp” and, for Training, have been holding a mock election for DC mayor — young progressives nationwide care about DC zoning issues more than anything else — all week. It took us several days to understand this, as these e-mails with subject “Endorse the Green Lantern for DC Mayor” and such kept evading our spam filters. So with voting ending at 6, tonight, let’s make an “informed” endorsement!
Your choices are Atom, Batgirl, Batwoman, Cyborg, Green Lantern, Spiderman, Superman, and Wonderwoman, oh boy. Well RIGHT OFF THE BAT, “New Organizing Institute,” you should know that using alphabetical order on ballots can skew results with an apathetic voting bloc (us!) But anyway, this is the sort of stuff getting sent out from each campaign:
Additionally, word is that the Green Lantern has been hanging out with Steel (the African American Superman), a DC native, and who may be facilitating appearances at key churches and meetings with DC institutions like Fauntroy and Barry. It seems the Green Lantern is hip to the voting constituency of DC … word is he has a plan in the works for a whole host of projects east of the river, including the Green Lantern Corps to move its interstellar headquarters to Southeast DC.
As for other parts of the city, Ward 2 residents should rejoice that the Green Lantern is not letting the Marvel-DC comics divide get in the way of his friendship with Northstar, the openly gay member of the X-Men, and to help bring the Justice League to move their headquarters to the Atlas District for a revitalize NE campaign.
Last, we can be sure to one thing … with that mighty ring in hand, the Congressional votes for DC statehood may finally and literally materialize to bring home our dream of being taxed for a reason.
We have no idea what the fuck is going on.
Wonkette endorses… let’s see… Cyborg, because (a) they never sent us a press release with psychotic gibberish and (b) why not. EVERYONE GO VOTE FOR CY-BORG. It is time to WARBLOG.
TRUE NEWS: All of the candidates, except CYBORG, Tell your neighbor!
Mary Worth, 7/10/09
Bless you, Charley Smith! Bless your stripey shirt and your $11 haircut and your transparent attempt to work your way into Delilah’s insane pants! Bless you for showing us a side of Mary Worth that we’ve never seen before — something bordering on flustered panic, as she sees her meddlee slipping out of her grasp and, in desperation, physically drags her to safety. I love the fact that Mary is continuing with the verbal niceties of a normal, polite conversation, despite the fact that she’s practically breaking her poor boarder’s wrist in a desperate attempt to save her from her own horny misjudgment. I’m pretty sure in the final panel she’s on the verge grabbing Charley’s phone number away from Delilah with her teeth and eating it to prevent the two of them from ever communicating again.
Gil Thorp, 7/10/09
This, on the other hand, I do not care for. You want Gil to coach baseball? Don’t you remember how boring that was during actual baseball season? The whole point of the summer storylines are to get away from that sort of thing. I suppose it might be acceptable if Gil is put in charge of a team of impoverished, ill-mannered youths with sassy mouths, and if an embittered Shep Trumbo comes to games dressed as a hobo just to harass them.
Apartment 3-G, 7/10/09
Even with all the Tibet-themed madness that’s been going on in this strip for months, if you had asked me what celebrity would make a special guest appearance in Apartment 3-G, the Dalai Lama would not have been my first guess. I don’t buy his claim that his English not so good — he’s deploying a semicolon, after all, which is at least an intermediate-level move. No, I think that the real reason for his quick exit is that’s he’s afraid to share narrative space with Margo, and with good reason. I imagine that the powerful combination of arousal and terror that anyone would feel in her presence would make it very difficult to maintain a Buddhist sense of non-attachment.
Catfight, Pennsylvania-style! Several months ago, Arlen Specter made the very principled and selfless decision to switch parties so as to avoid an ugly primary battle with a “real Republican,” which is to say, a vicious and crazed wingnut who would win the GOP nomination and then lose the election to any Democratic candidate short of a goat. It was the perfect plan: Specter could stay in the Senate, as Democrat, as long as nobody ran against him in that party’s primary.
But a fellow named Democratic Representative Joe Sestak decided to gum up the works and has just been a bitch to Specter, all the time. Here is a recent exchange from their ungentlemanly feud:
“Congressman Sestak is a flagrant hypocrite in challenging my being a real Democrat when he did not register as a Democrat until 2006 just in time to run for Congress,” Specter said in the statement. “His lame excuse for avoiding party affiliation, because he was in the service, is undercut by his documented disinterest in the political process.”
To which Sestak responded:
“We’ve learned today that Arlen Specter can abandon his party, but he just cant [sic] quit making Republican swift-boat attacks on the integrity of Democrats who served in our military,” Sestak also said in the statement. He added, “My question to Arlen Specter is this: do you regret voting for George Bush and John McCain? Why should Democrats support someone like you who actively campaigned as recently as last year for politicians with values like George W. Bush?”
Ugh. This is going to be Lamont/Lieberman all over again, with poor Joe Sestak stuck riding the bus with the rabble in a few years.
Specter: Sestak a ‘flagrant hypocrite’ [Political Ticker]
The Tabard Inn is one of DC’s oldest and most historic hotels, with a simple yet elegantly decorated restaurant set to one side. (There is also an outdoor patio area). The Tabard Inn’s small dining area usually has a noisy crowd during brunch, the only real detraction from what is one of the best brunches in town. (more…)
Tabard Inn is perhaps best known for its homemade doughnut — a warm, cake-y and delicious treat that comes with a side of homemade vanilla whipped cream. At $1.50 each, no Tabard Inn brunch is complete without a few doughnuts for the table.
Tabard Inn has an extensive seasonal menu and all of the dishes I’ve tried were excellent.
The savory tart of the day consisted of lump crab meat, spinach and Gruyere, and came with a side of fresh mixed greens. The tart was a thick slice with large visible pieces of crab; the crusts were nicely crisp and the middle soft.
Another highlight was the smoked fish plate, which came with a large portion of house-smoked salmon and bluefish, with frissee, caper berries, crostini, and homemade crème fraîche. The salmon in outperforms the smoked salmon you’d find at virtually any other place in the city.
Other excellent dishes were the frittata with tomatoes and goat cheese, and a lobster and brie omelet. The coffee was strong and rich, and the wait staff brought individual cream servers with each coffee, which was a nice touch.
Overall, this a great choice for brunch. You must get a reservation several days in advance if you want to go on Sunday. Saturday brunch is less crowded.
Tabard Inn, 1739 N St. NW, Washington DC 20036, (202) 833-2668.
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An exclusive first look at a forthcoming short series via Avatar Press.
(It’s not actually steampunk. And there’s not really a serial killer.)
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)
Eksmo, my Russian publisher, recently re-upped its license for Old Man’s War, which I was happy about, but what I’m even happier about is that the new version of the book no longer has the “completely unrelated angry soldiers taken from Warhammer 40,000″ artwork of the original print run (on the left, above); instead they’ve gone and either created new artwork specific to the series, or at the very least licensed art work that looks like it could be related to what’s going on in the book (and made the guy on the cover green). Whichever it is, I like it. I will note that my name is no longer above the title in the second edition. I think I’ll live.
When you are sending out a press release to promote a book, do try to make sure that the second half of your press release doesn’t devolve into Martian gibberish, even if the author you are promoting is science fiction’s own Robert Silverberg. Most of us don’t read Martian, and those of us who do, don’t want to advertise the fact.
That said, the book being promoted here, Silverberg’s autobiography Other Spaces, Other Times, is in fact a lovely book which I can recommend to Silverberg fans and those who’d like a first hand view of the genre’s history, from one of its Grand Masters (who is also, I can personally attest, just an absolutely wonderful human being). And at no point does the book itself devolve into Martian gibberish. That’s a guarantee. Give it a look.
Let’s see, what am I thinking today:
* Having finished The Project I Can’t Tell You About Yet, the question now becomes what I do next. And the short answer to that is: No idea. The PICTYAY was one on a list of possible things to do; now that it’s done, I suppose I’ll go back to the list and see what on it interests me the most. I still have time to think about it, though, since whatever major thing I do next, I’m not going to start until after Worldcon. That’s because between now and then I have another busy travel schedule, and I’ve learned that me + travel = a whole lot of nothing getting done. Fortunately after Worldcon, I’ve got no substantial travel until October, when I head to Martha’s Vineyard for Viable Paradise. That’s a nice chunk of time in which to get something done.
* Which is not to say I’ll be spending the time in the interim, like, eating chocolates. I’ll be catching up on a couple of non-writing projects, including losing at least some percentage of the Buddha Belly I’ve been sort of passively been working on (when you meet the Buddha Belly on your abdomen, KILL IT), working on SG:U and the AMC column, and, oh, who knows, maybe writing a short fiction piece or two, because why not. And totally killing zombies. Because what are you doing with your life if you’re not totally killing zombies?
* Things purchased at the store this morning: Three yogurts, two cans of chicken soup, a bottle of Gatorade, and a package of Immodium AD. To which the checkout lady said, “oh, no, you have a little one home sick today.” Which indeed is entirely true. On the other hand, the little one is a bit feeling better and is spending the day lying on the couch watching cartoons, so I don’t think it’s entirely a bad day for her. Still, today was the day her day camp was going off to the local water park, so she’s not necessarily of the same opinion. I know, I’ll take her out into the yard and put the hose to her. That’ll be just the same.
* Going back to the subject of Worldcon, I received my schedule, which includes two reading slots (one for non-fiction, the other for fiction), a signing and a kaffeklatch. So, stalkers, you’re in luck! I’ll post the full schedule as we get a bit closer to the actual event.
In which Bruce Sterling beats the shit out of some people:
”
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)Profile
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ivorjawa- Antarctica, Winter 1982
- Jawa IsBroken
Page Summary
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wonkette : Somebody Says ‘Boo’ To Wonkette’s Famous Journalism [+0] - wonkette : David Brooks Remembers That One Night, When Some GOP Senator Kept Grabbing His Thigh [+0]
- fanw : Obama saving the day -- Again!! [+1]
- warren_ellis : Night Music: Natural Snow Buildings [+0]
- dnalounge : Wherein I tweak the calendar and canvass the voters. [+1]
- molblog : For kungfoogirl [+1]
- wonkette : Tinkerbell, Woolly Mammoths, and Plays About Death [+0]
- scrubbo : Grrrr.... [+8]
- derspatchel : wait, what [+4]
- molblog : Yaller flaahrs [+0]
- wonkette : Marion Barry Dresses Up Like a Lady, Commits Heist of the Millenium! [+0]
- wonkette : Peggy Noonan Chastiseth Thine Wolf-Childe Sarah Palin! [+0]
- apple_hotnews : ArtusLabs: Constant travel, customized apps [+0]
- jwz : "Join us now" indeed. [+35]
- wonkette : (no subject) [+0]
- wonkette : Appeaser Obamas Meet With Former Nazi [+0]
- wonkette : OKAY, You People Who Keep Asking Us To Endorse Various Superheroes For DC Mayor… [+0]
- joshreadscomics : Mary will drag you to righteousness, harlot [+0]
- wonkette : Sestak And Specter Already Going At It [+0]
- wonkette : Tabard Inn: One of the Best Brunches In Town [+0]
- apple_hotnews : Saving the Grizzly on iTunes U [+0]
- warren_ellis : CAPTAIN SWING On G4’s Attack Of The Show [+0]
- docbrite : Leavin' On A Jet Plane [+3]
- molblog : I am so excited!!! [+13]
- scalzifeed : Russian Before and After [+0]
- scalzifeed : A Handy Tip for Publicists [+0]
- scalzifeed : Various & Sundry, 7/10/09 [+0]
- warren_ellis : Bruce Sterling At Reboot 2009 [+0]
- wonkette : Here Is Obama Looking At That Gal’s Badonkadonk [+0]
- apple_hotnews : Coming Attractions: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [+0]
chasethestars