Random Districtions #1

And now, because I see our nation’s most powerfully patriotic monuments every day, I would like to borrow from the immortal words of good old Tommy Jeff-Jeff to explain a new feature to my blog.

When in the course of a human blog, it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the typical structure which has connected their ideas with one another, and to assume among the powers of earthly snark, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Washington D.C and of Washington D.C's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should write down these thoughts no matter how random or obnoxious. Such is Random Districtions!

Random Districtions #1: Why is everyone at my gym so ugly?

I recently joined the Washington Sports Club in Columbia Heights and I think it was a poor decision.

Let’s face it: working out sucks. Exerting yourself? Who needs it? Sweat is clearly just your body crying. In fact I am comfortable enough with myself to admit that I work out for one reason and one reason alone: vanity. No, unlike most people who exercise, I am not trying to get healthy, nor do I have a fat pre-teen past to run from, and I certainly don’t have any weird daddy-daughter issues (I think my daughter turned out just fine thank you very much); rather I work out so as to have the slightest hint of definition on my otherwise manorexic frame and so that I don’t sweat as much when I run to catch a bus/plane/train. That’s it.

The funny thing about Washington DC is that I assumed everyone, in their desperate attempt to get elected President of the United States, would be fit. It's common knowledge that if one wants to appear presidential, one must attain a certain level of executive fitness. We haven’t had a fat president since Taft in 1912 for Christ’s sake! Sure, Hoover was pudgy, but compared to the people standing in the check out line at Wal-Mart he was a GREEK GOD. Indeed, since World War One we’ve seen every single president engaged in some kind of exercise (Well maybe not that lazy bastard FDR. How come you never saw photos him jogging? Or playing soccer? Or tap-dancing?)

Thus people in Washington DC should be fit. But not at the WSC in Columbia Heights. No no. Everyone there looks like a fun house mirror/nightmare version of normal people with gym membership. There’s a big fat guy in tiny little clothing and then a little shrimpy guy in hugely baggy clothing! The elliptical machines are filled with mouth breathing Jewish girls and older women with camel toes so bad you’d think you were in Saudi Arabia! There’s even a 5’1 Mexican body lifter with a shoe polish black comb-over and a mustache and accent straight out of a racist 1950s Speedy Gonzalez cartoon (is there any other kind?).

So what am I to do? Alea, my housemate, has encouraged me to go work out at the WSC gym in DuPont circle. Unfortunately, that’s the gayest gym in town, and I just don’t think I can handle all the judging or the fact that I’ll be the most out of shape person by far. I could maybe work my congressional connections and try to use one of their stellar gyms, but the security’s tight and the chance of running into Larry Craig in the shvitz are much too high.

The sad truth is I’ll probably keep going because I am too cheap to waste the money (happy mom? I did learn one thing in Hebrew school...). So, after wrestling with this problem for many days, I have decided to do the other, sure fire way of making a group of sweaty ugly people look good: next time I head to the gym, I should get blindingly drunk like I’m going to a club!

Who wants a tricep press-tini?

Bon Halloween!

Bonjour mes cheres ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and germans,

As you may have guessed, these four characters above are the scariest things to a Frenchman like myself. Indeed, we Frenchmen do not celebrate Halloween, as we prefer to not dress like monsters, but rather find them in the the duality of man. Plus the government would totally subsidize trick-or-treat candy and I am just not sure I could not in good conscious give out that much Toblerone.

Anyway, as my intern Ben Grinspan prepares our site's next thrilling post, here are some jolie Washington DC-themed Halloween costume ideas to keep you amused until then.

1. Death Panel

Get a bunch of friends together, dress as Marx, Lenin, Mao, Obama or any other famous pinkos and have them send Granny to the great workers' paradise in the sky

2. Birthers

I'm gonna say you should dress up like a baby and hand out racially tinged literature on Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. Because really dressing like a racist toddler can not possibly be more embarrassing than being an actual Birther.

3. Town Hall Member

First place, I wouldn't try this outfit unless you are white. So if you are, dress up like a 70 year old and then gain 100 pounds. This Halloween costume works best if you have a party to attend on Capitol Hill or perhaps the National Mall, that way your ranting about how brown people are scary can get you on Fox News!

4. The Public Option

Dress like a slutty doctor. Done. 

She's the public option baby- everyone's been insured by her!

5. Capitol Hill Intern

Hey Mom and Dad didn't max out on their donations to the DNC for nothing! Grab your Blackberry and your most poorly fitting business suit and count down the hours until you go to law school or move to New York.

Finally...CONGRESSIONAL ZOMBIES!

Are the living? Are they dead? Did they get re-elected for a 15th time or are they merely return from the grave to vote on non-binding resolutions honoring the American Tulip industry? Who cares! Just get some creepy make-up and see let the Huffington Post come to you.

Bon Halloween, y'all!

Are DC Killer Police Robot Tricycles Cool?

Historical eras tend assume the title of their most important technology: think of the Bronze age, the Iron age, the Industrial revolution and the Nuclear age. Ask any historian nowadays and they’ll tell you we live in the Segway age. When was the last time you saw someone using their “feet” or a “car” to get somewhere? No, we are the Segway generation because it’s what has truly separated us from the animals: obviously it's not so much our mastery of industry and electronics part, but the fact that many higher forms of intelligence (dogs, cats, whales) can feel shame, yet we as humans have accepted how completely stupid we look on Segways and have simply moved on.

This is why I think the T-3 is so exciting. Pictured above, this new police caliber Segway-type vehicle is the thin blue line separating the Washington DC area between civilization and chaos. Built to keep thieves from breaking into cars at suburban metro stations, the T-3 is the new parking lot Panzer tank. I even saw one the other day at Union Station, warding off potential criminals with its threatening yet modern design that's reminiscent of an angry salt shaker.

And remember this isn’t just a single use technology, there are all kinds of things the DC police department could do with such a handsome three wheeled killing machine. What if you need to reach products at the top of the grocery aisle or the library stacks at 20 mph? Or maybe the DC government, who probably barely has the money to cover the cost of the new T3s, could make money by organizing some sort of Roman style chariot race, where police officers hurl spears at each other as Marion Barry, Arianna Huffington or George Stephanopoulos give the thumbs down to the roars of a crowd of blood thirsty but Segway loving spectators? The possibilities are endless!

So I am going to give the T3 a big fat “cool” seal of approval, because Robocop ain’t got shit on this.

Welcome to yet another pointless blog!

Cheres amis,

How good of you to join us at Is Washington DC Cool? I, Pierre Charles De L'Enfant, shall be your host for the next year, in this epic quest to answer the question of whether or not the city that I designed is truly the nation's capitol, or merely a series of maddening traffic circles and located inside the grid lock of the I-95 Beltway.

So, I invite you to luxuriate a little, explore this blog and consider the certain je ne sais quoi of the District of Columbia's finer and lamer points. Feel free to start at the beginning of this blog to really see how my unpaid assistant Ben Grinspan avoided his minor responsibilities at his equally unpaid internship and began writing this, comment dit-on?, blog.


With Sexy French Kisses,
CPDL

Are DC Pumpkins Cool?

Now I know I have mostly written about hobos, French ghosts and luggage, but I feel in the spirit of First Lady Michele Obama that it is my duty to put on a cardigan, wrap a couple of snazzy belts around my torso, and start discussing local produce.

I wish I was coming to you today to discuss a happier subject: sadly, I must report to you that DC is in the grip of a pumpkin crisis. Terror reigns on the street, and crazed mobs of middle aged women have held up every single one of the nine Starbucks on my block, stealing pumpkin spice lattes at gun point. Even the normally calm and collected Glenn Beck has declared the pumpkin crisis is a sign of the gay-socialist-Muslim apocalypse.

The Great Pumpkin Crisis of 2009 stems from a major shortage of pumpkins all over the Mid-Atlantic. On October 12th the Washington Times reported that Washington DC area pumpkin brokers are seeing supplies down 50-70% (side note: how exactly does one become a pumpkin broker? Does it require a master’s degree or can anyone do it?), and this is when our world began collapsing around itself. The cause of this crisis is as sad as the devastation it has wreaked on the families of our nation's capitol: as we all know, DC area pumpkin varieties need the humid blast furnace that is the Washington summer to grow and prosper, and the cool rainy summer has seriously affected these hardy but deeply mutated orange ambassadors of the fall.

The question is now will the Obama administration be willing to give Big Pumpkin yet another bailout? With pumpkins exploding in New England, it’s only a matter of time before Congress wades in on the matter. The basics of pumpkin economics suggest that as supply goes down, demand and prices go up. I’m not sure if I want my precious tax dollars being spent to prop up an industry that only makes profits in the month of October (I suppose being profitable 1/12th of the year is still far better than GM is doing).

So I am going to put my foot down here. DC pumpkins, with their high falutin’ organic attitude, pretentious scarcity and constant government scandals are not cool.

I can’t believe I ate you in a pie last night.

Hipster stalking

If DC was a magical forest, and it isn’t unless you’re on a healthy dose of shrooms, then full fledged urban hipsters would be its unicorn. It’s chain-smoking ghetto-residing Grizzly-Bear-is-the-only-pop-music-I-listen-too Unicorn.

I have no desire to be a hipster; I just don’t have the energy to disdain as many things as they do (I guess that’s why they snort all that adderall). I do however aspire to dress as well as some of them do. When I am in Philly or New York I feel the need to dress myself stylishly, but in DC I think as long as you’re not one of those sad drooling nerds wearing a NASA swipe card on a lanyard around you’re neck then you’re pretty much in the clear. Indeed, just this morning on the metro I saw a well dressed European guy with a shaved head who, surrounded by all those ill-fitting grey tweed suits and frumpy cardigans, looked like he was from the future.

Of course now when I walk around the district and I see a guy about my age wearing slim jeans, cool sneakers and a neat top, I stare at them as though they were a magical Unicorn. Sometimes they notice and get creeped out, and while it is kind of spooky to do that, I just want to go up to them and say “Dude who I will see at the Dirty Projectors concert: I am not cruising you, you just have a single grand swirling horn sticking out of your forehead and it’s hard not to stare at. What? No I can’t sell you any peyote. Stop trying to buy drugs from me: Don’t you have a think tank that seeks to make art less accessible to the general public to get to?”

I thought it was time to air this confession to the warm understanding embrace of the internet: because at least this way when I am charged with a federal crime for stalking (remember: all felonies in the District are federal!) you’ll have a better sense of why I need to borrow bail money, dude.