Now playing at a theater near you

WAYNESBURG, Pa. — Bruce Wayne, billionaire owner of Wayne Enterprises, would be pleased to see that the Waynesburg Theatre is playing "Batman" this week.

Rain Day

WAYNESBURG, Pa. — I never thought I'd get the chance to watch Miss Rain Day¹ perform. Let alone on a sunny day. Yesterday, I did both.

Rain Day, it turns out, is a Greene County tradition dating back to July 29, 1876, when a farmer walked into the Daly & Spraggs Drug Store on High Street and chatted up pharmacist William Allison. According to the Waynesburg legend, the farmer declared that it had always rained on that day. It was the farmer's birthday, you see, and thus he had paid particular attention.

The pharmacist used this insider information to bet salesmen who came into his store that it would rain on July 29.

A Rain Day wager tradition was born.

Then a Rain Day festival.

Then Miss Rain Day.


¹Miss Rain Day 2008 is Alissa McCracken. The buzz during this year's Rain Day was that an out-of-town friend of the late Gregory Shipe gave birth to a Rain Day baby. Shipe, a Waynesburg native, was murdered in Northwest D.C. three years ago. Since then, his friends have trekked to Waynesburg on Rain Day in his honor (having heard about the town's festival for years, but never having gone themselves).

Lavern's Restaurant

GREENE COUNTY, Pa. — You may know Lavern's Restaurant from the fourth season of "The West Wing," in which the presidential motorcade leaves Toby, Josh, and Donna behind in Indiana and they are forced to stop at this diner on their way back to D.C.¹

I'm famous!

(Lavern's pancakes are fantastic, by the way.)

¹I never saw that episode, since I stopped watching the show after the second season.

One sandwich = two meals

fPITTSBURGH, Pa. — During an interview before the Pennsylvania primary in April, Jon Stewart told Barack Obama he should stop by Primanti Bros. for a quintessential Iron City meal.

Yesterday, I followed his advice and stopped by the shop's Market Square outpost for its iconic sandwich, which includes meat, cheese, hand-cut french fries, tomatoes and coleslaw between two slices of Italian bread.

It was enough to last me both lunch and dinner.

Non-billable time

During an meeting in the conference room awhile ago, I looked at the office building across the street¹ and noticed that someone had created a scene from Pac-Man in the window, complete with Inky The Ghost and pellets.

Soon, someone in the building next door put up Donkey Kong in the window.

Since then, many more 1980s-era arcade game characters have popped up in nearby buildings. There's Q*bert, Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Princess Zelda, Frogger, MegaMan, Space Invaders and many more.²

My office's contribution is Mario (pictured above) and there are plans to make an elaborate scene that include pipes and Koopa Troopas.

(Click to enlarge.)

¹It's not like there's a glut of interesting things to admire outside my office window, which overlooks Vermont & L streets NW. Well, except for pink beds and UPS trucks with white roofs.
²I was surprised that the Washington Post noticed this trend. Then again, we are a mere block from their newsroom.

Can you hear me now? Good

Verizon Wireless spokesman David Clevenger¹ revealed this week that the mobile phone company stores the content of text messages "for a very short time — days."

Clevenger continued: "We have 68 million customers, and we wouldn't be able to keep all their text messages. We have no reason to do it."

First of all, it seems plausible that Verizon could indeed store text messages if they wanted to. Gmail, for example, stores 7,000 MB worth of email for of its tens of millions of non-paying customers.

Also, I question whether Verizon has "no reason" to want to keep the content, as Clevenger claimed. It seems to me that there could be plenty of reasons why some of its 70,000 employees may become curious to see the content.


¹He serves as Verizon's executive director of media relations for the Midwest region. It's not clear whether he also covers the Industrial Midwest region.

Inaugural bowl

More facts have emerged on the Congressional Bowl, to be played here in the District on Dec. 20: the game will pit the 9th-best ACC team against Navy, assuming both are bowl eligible.

It's too bad the game will be at Nationals Park instead of RFK Stadium, but I'm still planning to attend.

This is your captain speaking. Please vote yes on H.R. 6493

Continental flight 458, headed from Houston (IAH) to Washington (DCA), made an emergency landing in New Orleans (MSY) yesterday after a loss in cabin pressure.

Seven congressmen were on board: Reps. John Carter (R-Texas), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Texas), Ron Paul (R-Texas), Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas).

The seven men were flying to Washington to vote on the Aviation Safety Enhancement Act.

They missed the vote.

But the House of Representatives approved the bill on a 391-0 vote.

Industrial Midwest vs. the Midwest

Earlier this month, the Obama campaign re-shuffled its communications staff.

It now has six regional communications directors covering the following areas:

• Northeast
• Midwest
• Southwest
• Industrial Midwest
• South
• West

Presumably the "Industrial Midwest" comprises Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, while the "Midwest" is Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois.

But why make people (reporters, mostly) guess whether a state is "industrial" or not? Why not just list the states for each regional communication director?¹

Also, where do North Dakota and South Dakota fit in the Obama campaign's map? Are they part of the Midwest? The West?


¹I don't want to get into a whole thing here, but Wisconsin isn't exactly void of industrial areas — particularly around the Oscar Mayer, Kraft, Johnsonville, Miller Brewing, Kimberly-Clark and Northern Paper Mills industrial plants.

Thank you for sharing

Juan de Fuca, back in the news

Layers of basalt rocks off the Washington and Oregon coasts could store 100 years worth of CO2 emissions, according to scientists.¹

The rocks have zero permeability, meaning it would be impossible for the CO2 to leak. Plus, at 2,700 meters deep, CO2 is denser than water and thus wouldn’t rise to the surface.

The rocks in question are in the Juan de Fuca plate.

Juan de Fuca.

Juan de Fuca.

Wait, how do I know that name?

Oh, right — the 600 earthquakes in April. And he was a Greek navigator. Got it.

Earthquakes. CO2 storage. Greek navigator.

I'll be ready the next time his name comes up again.


¹I am referring to research by David S. Goldberg, Taro Takahashi and Angela L. Slagle published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Verizon ad

How do we feel about this ad?

Please select an answerIt's sexist.Lighten up. It's satire. By the way, I love the New Yorker cover.I don't understand the ad. Should I buy shoes or fast Internet?

Walking to Adams Mill Rd.

In its multi-part series "Who Killed Chandra Levy," the Washington Post reveals that the intern liked to work out in the gym. And go jogging in nearby parks.

But a closer look at the details shows that Levy did not like walking uphill. Or on routes that would take her right by my apartment.

For example, here's how she visited her boyfriend, Gary Condit:¹

A few times per week, according to the Post, Levy would work out at the Washington Sports Club on Connecticut Ave. (1), take the Metro (2) to Woodley Park (3) and then walk to Condit’s apartment (4).


¹Condit runs a couple of Baskin-Robbins ice cream shops in Arizona these days, but at the time of course, he was a congressman.

Rainbow on the block

Yesterday at AFI Silver, I saw "The Muppet Movie" for the first time. Hearing "The Rainbow Connection" inspired me to post this picture I took the other day after a rainstorm.

Elevator etiquette

Elevator etiquette calls for all riders to face the door. Everyone knows this.

But what happens if there are two doors?

In particular, let's say you enter the elevator through one door but know for a fact that it's the other door that will open on the next floor.

Which way do you face?

Select your responseI face the door I enteredI face the door I know will open nextI face one of the other two wallsI refuse to ride such an elevator

You tell a chick you've been some place, it's like bragging that you know how to find it

Today’s Politico discusses unofficial Capitol Hill job e-mail lists, pointing out that those lists — not the official published listings — are the best way to find vacancies before they’re already filled.

The article quotes Paul Teller, who works for a House Republican caucus, as saying that the secret lists filters out applicants who are too dumb to know the lists exist:

“To get a job on the Hill, you have to be a good networker, have a little savvy. The job search is kind of that first hurdle and test to doing that. It provides a good weeding-out of people. If you can’t do a basic networking-type thing … then maybe you’re not Capitol Hill material.”

He’s probably right. Indeed, the lists aren’t hard to find.

Then again, if day-to-day congressional jobs regularly call upon staffers to locate secret email lists, maybe that skill should be listed in the job description.

Baggy white t-shirts on 18th St.

At TomTom (above left, click to enlarge), patrons may not wear white t-shirts.¹

Peyote Cafe (above right, click to enlarge) appears to allow tight-fitting white t-shirts, narrowing its ban to "baggy white t-shirts."

Presumably, colored shirts may be baggy at Peyote Cafe. But not "excessively baggy."

At least neither establishment bans "MC colors" like Lucky Strike. I still have no idea which colors those are.


¹What's wrong with white t-shirts? Isn't that a classic look?

Gimme some dap

I always thought that the term "dap" was an initialism from the black power movement that stood for "dignity and pride."

So did the Baltimore Sun.

But William Safire examined the issue yesterday and didn't mention "dignity and pride" (even to rule it out as a backronym), instead noting that "dap" may be rooted in the word "dapper."

That strikes me as a lame explanation. I hope it's wrong.

The Awakening

OXON HILL, Md. — Well, they've moved The Awakening.

The 100-foot sculpture of a man struggling to rise out of the ground finally left D.C.'s Hains Point, his home of 27 years, in favor of National Harbor in Maryland's Prince George's County.

I don't like its new location, although the model of the National Harbor development (pictured above) does make it appear quite popular.

The wires

Have you ever wondered why there are wires hanging off the Wilson Bridge? I was, so I asked the fine people aboard the National Harbor Water Taxi.

The wires, it turns out, are used to hold up a platform for the bridge's construction workers.

What day is today?

Okay, do we really need the news crawl on CNN to tell us what day it is?

It's especially useless when, as in this case, I get around to watching something days later.

But is it ever useful?

What are the chances that viewers care about the other information on the crawl — such as a car-bomb in Iraq or violence in Gaza — if they're on the edge of their seat waiting to read what day it is?