Wonkette
- Erstwhile athlete/web-logger Gilbert Arenas has been immortalized in wax, at a museum full of wax people. [DCist]
- If it snows on Inauguration Day, Barack Obama’s car will still get to the White House just fine, and you can still probably charge the person renting out your couch obscene amounts of money for the privilege of doing so. [WTOP]
- Mary Chapin Carpenter, a country musician who’s biggest qualification is that she apparently doesn’t even live in DC, will be the newest Washington Times columnist. [Fishbowl DC]
- Meet Dulles’ newest runway! You will probably be spending several utterly inexplicable hours sitting on it sometime this holiday season. [Washington Post]
- Here are some tips for getting Obama to hire you, as the only jobs left in America are in the White House and at the Washington Times, and one of them has just gone to Mary Chapin Carpenter. [Politico]
Dammit, I was hoping the DC Moonie would snag Kristol.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters stood on a cold and windy airport taxiway and officially opened Runway 1L/19R, radioing the control tower to clear the first plane for takeoff. Seconds later, an American Airlines 737…
…crashed in a fiery explosion after running over the remnants of the champagne bottle used for the christening.
from Politico: “Says Barrett Kaiser, communications director for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and a longtime colleague and friend of Messina’s: “He’s a brilliant guy who walks around with a pocketful of long knives for his enemies and big bearhugs for his friends.”
Those bearhugs could be a problem if he has the long knives in the wrong pocket.
Mary Chapin Carpenter DID live here, though. So did Patsy Cline (born in Winchester, VA, or near there).
Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely
I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue…..
WTF. I thought Mary Chapin Carpenter was a Democrat. I have her best CD–am I going to have to throw it away now?
Ah, finally something worth reading in that Moonie-rag…
DustBowlBlues: I’m pretty sure she’s left leaning. I mean… she went to Brown.
I am right now sitting in concourse C of that supperating sore on America’s armpit known as Dulles Airport. Just flew in from OLD EUROPE, where I was cold hangin’ in Pairee with some cheese eatin’ surrender monkeys (damn fine cheese, mais oui). Here’s my question: is Dulles named for John Foster or Allen? Because they were both evil motherfuckers who worked for United Fruit and overthrew the Arbenz gov’t in Guatemala, leading to years of death-squad fun. In fact, why are both of DC’s airports named for death-squad enabling right wing freaks? (BWI doesn’t count–the W really stands for “Wilmington.”) “Welcome to Dulles foreigners, now up against the wall.” There’s nothing like the warm welcome that awaits folks landing from foreign lands. “Fill out these eight forms, and explain why you’re not a terrorist.” And that’s just for citizens, for fuck’s sake. Let’s build a third DC airport over in Maryland somewhere and call it Ollie North Flughaven.
Anyway, fuck their shiny new runway. Why can’t they just build a shiny moving walkway between concourses C and D so that when you land at gate C1 you don’t have to join the Death March to your connecting gate, which is always around D100 or something. Even Philly has moving walkways, and who goes to Philly? Can I get an amen?
/posts that belong in travel blogs
DustBowlBlues: About two years into the administration the outgoing guy, Whatshisname, I hit a wall of intolerance, what with country music having somehow become the last refuge of patriotic scoundrels. I dumped of all my country CDs except for Johnny Cash, Wanda Jackson (because), and, for some unremembered reason, Mary Chapin Carpenter. If anyone wants the Carpenter CDs, they’ll be in the country bin at Amoeba in San Francisco by the end of this weekend.
DangerousLiberal: AMEN.
Has nothing to do with any of the above, but there was just an awesome car chase in OKC. A long, long car chase up the turnpikes. I saw it live in the teevees! This guy was going 120 before they chased him into a Chili’s parking lot where he slammed into a car–that owner’s the loser for the day.
It isn’t unheard of for turnpike scofflaws to try to run out on paying the toll, but, fuck.
Wanda Jackson? That is so impressive, unless you have the CDs from her Christian period, which she is still in.
But her early stuff is good and pretty esoteric. Unless you went to high school in OKC in the 1950s in which case, you ain’t that special.
DangerousLiberal: Philly and Dulles both suck in that they require a fucking bus to get you between terminals (but at least the Philly bus isn’t on stilts!). Aside from the fact that they tacked on Thurgood Marshall’s name to it (as opposed to Reagan or Dulles), like it or not BWI is the closest decent airport to DC. But I know many of you would burst into flames coming that close to Bal’mer.
I love the way she plays the drums, but how old is that photograph? This one was take in 1999: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Uso-show-mary-chapin-carpenter-pentagon-
DustBowlBlues: The Christian stuff is pretty awful, what little I’ve heard of it, but her early work is kind of mesmerizing. And no, I didn’t grow up in OKC; she was mentioned in an article I read years ago about the origins of punk.
I think I’ll keep her.
DustBowlBlues: “Esoteric?” “Fujiyama Mama” and “Riot in Cell Block #9″ get played every so often on Sirius’ “Underground Garage” channel. Or is this yet another way that teh satellite is turning me into a music snob?
Guppy06: All true, but it takes four hours on Metro, MARC, bus, and conestoga wagon to get from Arlington to BWI. So I gotta pick which ruthless right-winger-named airport to patronize. And, alors, not much int’l traffic too and from BWI these days.
Christ, what did I drink that’s making me get all Rick Steves on y’all?
Guppy06: I went to Hiroshima/Nagasaki, too/And what I did for them/I can do to you!
Sounds like Caribou Barbie’s new campaign song! I know about her because of Nick Tosches. Weirdly, I never heard of her in Oklahoma, and I used to stay in Seminole County, where she’s from (unless I’m having a typical memory lapse and the town of Maud is in Pottowatamie County, right next door)
Guppy06: I dunno, I think National is great. It’s on the Metro, and it’s little and easy to get around in. I never refer to it by the Gipper’s name, so that’s not a prob. Since I’m only flying to Atlanta, NYC or Boston, and there are like, 50 billion flights a day between DC and those places, it’s my little airport girlfriend.
Dulles, on the other hand, sucks big green donkey ones. They’re all proud that they’re getting some kind of “train” to replace the stilt-buses, but it’s still a $55 cab ride from DC.
Terry: I had a flat tire
in Winchester VA once. Right outside a Burger King.