And another thing!

Wondering if anyone else had made the same (rather obvious) connection between the Litvinenko case and Wolves Eat Dogs, I did a little Googling.

My favorite was this guy's comment, because he not only made the connection, but then went on to connect the connection to William Gibson, one of my favorite authors:

Adactico's Facts Eat Fiction

His comment on Gibson, "at this rate, he’ll end up writing historical fiction," makes me think he hasn't yet read The Difference Engine, a truly strange book where Gibson creates an alternative version of the past.

Heh

I forgot to mention that I had lunch with a girl I used to work with, and she told me she saw a guy walking down the street typing on his Blackberry -- and then she saw him walk into a Don't Walk Sign and saw his head go "bonk." And that cracked her up (although she kept the laugh silent). As it would've done to me.

Cafe Luna

Popped over to Cafe Luna (not to be confused with Luna Grill) yesterday for dinner. It's been a while since I've been there, not since it was renovated (in fact, I didn't even know about the renovation). Snaps up for the makeover; it feels a lot less crowded and a lot less obnoxiously noisy than it used to be. Despite the good, cheap food, those were reasons I usually stayed away in the past. Now there is room to breathe without feeling like your neighbors are right on top of you.

And here's the other thing, bottles of wine were half price! We got a bottle of a very nice syrah for $20 each. That plus a yummy avocado salad and some tasty linguine with tomato sauce and meatballs made for an excellent meal.

Layout

I was experimenting and messed up my layout and my links. 'Pologies!

Yummy food

One of the things I got from Trim last week, besides a haircut, was a restaurant recommendation: New Orleans Cafe, 2400 block of 18th. Tonight I met J up there to check it out. The dish I chose was the chicken jambalaya, spicy and delicious. For desert we had beignets (tasting not unlike the funnel cakes that are a mandatory part of any visit to the Delmarva shore).

Besides the food being delicious, the place is comfortable and totally devoid of pretense. The guy taking your order and bringing you the food is, I believe, the owner. And a Sunday night was the perfect time to go, just a handful of hungry locals trickling through as the evening wound on.

I leave you with this mashup, a horrifying mix of the Scissor Sisters, Beatles, Aretha Franklin, and George Michael. Some things were just not meant to be! No One Takes Your Freedom

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

I recently got to thinking about Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her song and video, "Take Me Home." I was introduced to this whilst in Central Asia in November 2001, in a place which time seemed to have left behind and where the skys were crisp and blue, and yet where the world around had gone terribly wrong. I digress. The only available distractions in Tashkent were MTV International and CNN, and that's how I met Sophie.

The song is great, the video is great, and Sophie E-B is a knockout. Check it.

Saturday

Went outside my usual orbit yesterday to an excellent party up in Silver Spring, in one of those huge apartment complexes up by East-West where everybody in this city has lived or knows someone who has lived at one time or another. The theme was German, and somebody went all-out and brought a Berlin Wall, made of rice krispies, with Gummy Bears representing people on both sides (but the Gummy Bears on the east side were all red.) The wall even had food-colored graffiti on it. I'm glad I got there in time to see it before it was torn down, I mean, eaten.

Then I headed in completely the opposite direction, to the Rock & Roll Hotel for Strangeways, a Smiths/Morrissey night put on by DJs Medusa an Strange. It was excellent, with a good crowd, and (of course) great music. I'm very much looking forward to their all-Bowie night at the same venue in January.

On the topic of R&R Hotel, I'm not used to the H Street NE Corridor being a destination, and the geography of that area is confusing. I think it's more so because Florida Avenue, which meanders through the city like a snake, is one of the main arteries down there, and if you're trying to orient yourself by a winding street like that, you're automatically in trouble. So to get there, I kind of felt my way across town, rather than knowing exactly where I was going -- down 16th, left on Irving, which I took all the way over to Park Place NW, where I took a right down to Michigan Avenue, which I followed past McMillan Reservoir and Children's Hospital over to North Capitol St. It's always been striking to see the Capitol all lit at night from way uptown in an area which is still a ghost town late at night. North Cap led me right to Florida, which took me over past Gallaudet to 11th and down to H NE. Worked out pretty well.

St. Paul Hotel

San Francisco - North Beach
Originally uploaded by alex.DC.

I dug up the last of my pictures from November's trip to San Francisco and posted them last night. The St. Paul Hotel in North Beach may not be the most glamorous place in the world, and you don't get your own bathroom, but the location can't be beat, you've got a view that makes you want to pretend you're a Beat poet, and you also can't beat $63 a night!

People in office elevators always like to chat about the weather, but what was interesting yesterday was the disparity of opinions I heard. The first person said to me, "this is going to be a terrible weekend... rain... cold... miserable." On the next elevator ride I was told, "I hear this weekend's going to be nice. Cold, but nice."

Intrigued by this incongruity, I brought up the subject myself with the next person I rode with. Her answer was, "I'm not sure," and then added, her eyes growing wide, "but I hear there are going to be BIG WINDS this afternoon."

So far it appears that the big winds and cold-but-nice predictions have held.

The Wal-Mart of Nightclubs

So I learned today that House of Blues, a national chain of clubs owned by Clear Channel, wants to build a huge club in DC. It would compete directly with home-grown venues like the 930 and the Black Cat, which, while not perfect, are our own. This is not good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/29/AR2006112901532.html