Brad Pitt Has Your Secret Shit: Rolling DC

lol

i got a jury duty summons the other day. i don't have it in front of me right now, but it appears that say that after submitting the questionnaire to the city, i am required to call into a hotline EVERY DAY from late november until December 28 to check to see if i have jury duty? wtf?! in maryland (the only other place i've been summoned), they just told you to show up in court on a certain day.

I have heard of the calling in thing. It saves you from going there every day. But yes doing it for a month is a pain.

In other news:
My fave local blogger (of course)

http://africaindc.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/where-to-get-6-packs-of-ethiopian-beer-friday-night-africa-in-dc/

Also, this is happening tonight Saturday the 28th

music, art, film, food
rsvp at eventbrite (which only allows rsvp for 1 person).

http://www.francedc.org/events/?id=210

Saturday, September 28, 2013 7:00 PM - Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:00 AM

Saturday, September 28
7PM-3AM
Wonderbread Factory // 620 S St, NW
No charge 21+ | RSVP

Re. the jury summons--have you been tapped for grand jury service? I was called for that a couple of years ago. I pleaded poverty (no employer to pay me while serving), whereupon they shifted me to the petty jury pool. I was then promptly selected for a jury, but it was a relatively straightforward hit-and-run case.

Yay, shutdown over!

Decided to eat Laotian food last night at Bangkok Golden in 7 Corners, to celebrate. Yummy

I had eaten there before, but was lured back by seeing the restaurant in Tom Sietsema's top 40 restaurants in the Post magazine last week. No, it did not get 4 stars.

Government shutdown messed up my plans to see certain exhibits at museums. I wish they could have extended the runs

Hey ZS, how did jury duty work out? If you're allowed to say?

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2013/10/17/georgetown-waiter-bought-fanciest-stuff-ever-with-stolen-credit-card-info/

Haven't heard back, but I can't make any travel plans for the holidays because I could have jury duty the day after thanksgiving or for Christmas Eve, and I won't know until the night before!

i suggest you make your plans!

one time in dc i got a summons but lost the notice so i called the hotline to find out when my day was -- the automated switchboard told me that the average hold time was 30 minutes. i hung up, ignored it, was not jailed. fuck that

I finally saw "Cool Disco Dan" movie this weekend. A bunch of it kinda bugged me, but I am still glad I saw it.

http://artforum.com/?pn=picks§ion=us#picks43498

ArtForum crits give love to a Transformer gallery exhibit that closes Saturday and to the Kerry James Marshall exhibit at the National Gallery of Art that is there through December I think

Transformer is such a consistently great gallery.

That article in the Washington Post Style section by the former dcist.com editor (now at Atlantic cities) on how D.C. is the cool city for her, was uncool.

that whole spread in the magazine this weekend about millennials remaking dc was obnoxious, though their descriptions of life at meridian buildings certainly jibed with every party i ever went to at one of those

Haven't read it yet, but thanks for the warning

Derek Rogers, a 23-year-old Meridian resident and an associate at a consulting firm, summed it up like so: “The pool is where you really see the colors of the building. It is a frat party. With less restrictions.”

Picture: the last Saturday in August. The midafternoon sun is pulling “now you see me, now you don’t” tricks, ducking in and out of clouds. Post-grad paraphernalia is scattered about: cardboard boxes of Bud Light and Corona Light, red Solo cups, brown paper bags from Trader Joe’s. Tattoos peek out from neon bikinis and bro tanks in all the predictable places – wrapped around upper arms, perched on shoulder blades, high on the hipbones and insides of ankles – and music is blasting. It’s Avicii’s “Levels,” sampling Etta James’s “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”: Ooooh, sometimes, I get a good feeling. I get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before.

it gets worse from there

the Post sees it as an advertiser package but I see it as an exposé

From the Style section millenial piece this morning

But as we look at the increase in restaurants, bike lanes, night-life options and other hallmarks of modern urban cool, there is also that admittedly less important, more ethereal question: Is it possible, after all this time, that D.C. is getting — whisper it with me now — awfully hip?

How predictable

huh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2013/10/18/march-of-the-millennials/

Once-dead streets are bustling, even after dark. High-rises are replacing aged structures and overgrown lots. Restaurants pop up overnight, like dandelions.

i feel like i have read a lot of writing where all the work that goes into all this passive/magical replacement process of making new buildings and restaurants appear is glossed over. not interesting

also re: some people they saw on 14th street, isn't 'transvestite' a derogatory term? where are the editors??

thx for reminder about transformer. d'oh. i was just at 14th and p this evening and didn't realize it closed so soon, will have to see it tomorrow

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/homespun-dc-places-lost-to-condos-and-burger-chains/2013/10/17/f065ac16-1a42-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html

At least one piece touched on what used to be here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/keep-your-cool-new-york-and-la-the-millennials-flocking-to-dc-redefine-hip/2013/10/23/5988d83c-3b2f-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html

S. Mathis hung out with the wrong people if all she can say re her time in LA and NYC is that LA is so superficial and NYC is so expensive. Not particularly insightful. And then she acknowledges that DC had Duke Ellington, go-go and punk but its really only becoming hip and cool now (because she has lots of friends who are policy wonks and such)

i'm friends with a bunch of said policy wonks (as are at least a couple people in this thread, i'm sure) - i gotta be careful here because i've met s0mmer and i have no problem with her, and i like her/my mutual friends a whole lot, but there's something weirdly depressing about hanging out with that whole cohort, even if they are super idealistic about remaking dc from the inside out

part of it is the fact that their world is completely foreign to me, but there's something more - there's something about a lot of young dc people's altruistic impulses that feels extremely insincere and self-serving to me.

that said they do serve really good beer at their parties though

I met her once and contributed on ocassion to dcist.com when she was there (but did not really work with her). I don't know her policy wonk friends and have nothing against them, I just hate that she's defining all of D.C. with just this one group, and with a cliched idea of coolness and hipness. Is that all she can offer: L.A.= superficial, N.Y. =expensive, D.C.= policy wonks. And the earlier quote: But as we look at the increase in restaurants, bike lanes, night-life options and other hallmarks of modern urban cool, there is also that admittedly less important, more ethereal question: Is it possible, after all this time, that D.C. is getting — whisper it with me now — awfully hip?

Groan. Its just lazy journalism.

Plus it's insulting to everyone else here.

what it comes down to is just that it's always really embarrassing for people to try to write about the idea of what's cool

pretty much

http://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/the-20-diner-panda-gourmet-dazzles-with-genuine-sichuan-and-shaanxi-cooking-at-a-days-inn/2013/08/28/cef3a876-0b9c-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html

Panda Gourmet on NY Avenue

Wonder if its as good as the 4 Corners Sichuan restaurant in a strip mall near Eden Center and Home Depot

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/shotspotter-detection-system-documents-39000-shooting-incidents-in-the-district/2013/11/02/055f8e9c-2ab1-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html?hpid=z2

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/calendar/film-programs.html#film-programs.html?category=Film%20Programs&pageNumber=1&_suid=138445983889007557851583022691

Which of the Pasolini films at the National Gallery do you recommend?

Film nerds come back and school me, please

Alright, I guess I will use ilxor search engine and google

Pier Paolo fucking Pasolini: Search (I don't want to hear your destroy choices cause they're of no fucking interest to me)

i've only ever seen medea and salo unfortunately. medea is really good (the marxism-for-dummies comment in that thread is way otm though). salo is obviously not in this series lest it inspire any "Taxpayers Fund Obscene Homosexual Christmas at Smithsonian"-style headlines again

Missed the this Sunday Pasolini movie but did finally see the interesting Kerry James Marshall exhibit in the East wing; and in the West wing the Charles Marville photos of Paris from the late 1800s; and the "Yes,No, Maybe" exhibit of printmaking with Chuck Close and John Cage and others.

According to Walmart spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg, the company is hiring about 300 associates for each store and has received more than 23,000 applications for D.C. Walmart jobs.

A 550-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment rents for about $2,700 a month. City Market has already rented 75, sight unseen.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/o-street-market-symbol-of-violence-becomes-a-marker-for-dcs-resurgence/2013/11/19/52012d2c-4ca9-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html?hpid=z2

Are these folks who are renting likely lobbyists and lawyers?

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/45074/the-people-issue-2013/

spam department. Ilxor Some Dude and I each wrote one of these q & a's of interesting D.C. people for this week's City Paper cover story

The Stadium Club owners paid ~$150K to clear the TruOrleans lien: $61,000 in singles. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/2013/11/stadium-club-bill-paid-lien-lifted.html …

one of the things i heard re: who rents those places, the housing funds (? not sure of the term) for some senior manager level government employees who get temporarily moved to the dc area for work (i think these are for the shorter term assignments, like someone at defense dept. here for a year or a couple years) is a lot of money - and has to be used for housing so there's no incentive to look for a place where the rent is cheaper since the government is paying for it, so if you have like $2-3K/month to spend on housing, why not rent a place that costs that much? this was the explanation i heard from friends as to how people could afford apartments in their arlington neighborhood where a one bedroom in certain buildings was like $2500

there's that, or if you figure it's a couple renting the apartment and each pays $1350/month it's not that difficult if they both make pretty good salaries? don't know why you'd spend quite that much on rent but again, if you're not expecting to stay there more than a year or two & can afford it..

^^^ having rented out our house for what seems like a totally obscene amount of money, I have pondered this myself. We've had two tenants: one was being relocated by his NYC law firm, which I am sure picked up the tab for the four month lease while the family looked for a place to buy. The second is a lawyer from the neighborhood who is doing a reno that is taking over six months, and is extensive enough that the family had to move out for that time. He makes over half a million bucks a year, so uh yeah, there is that. Basically rich people be rich, same ole' story.

my company (consulting company that does a lot of government work, though not exclusively) puts a shitload of people who are relocating/being staffed to longterm projects into corporate apartments in the immediate suburbs of nyc and dc, many of which are really just regular apartments in managed apartment complexes - when i left dc i lived in a one-bedroom in new jersey for a few months last year that cost them $3k-plus, and it wasn't even particularly close to manhattan

the way to look at it, i guess, is that it's STILL much cheaper than putting someone up in a hotel room 20 nights per month

Thanks.

In non-renting news, this Roger Ballen staged photos (mostly in South Africa) and drawings and a video with Die Antwoord exhibit at the Museum of African Art is interesting but creepy

http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/ballen/index.html

While the Eliot Elisofon photos from throughout Africa from the 40s through to 1970 or so exhibit, have me envious and wanting to be able to see all that
http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/africa-reviewed/index.html

Have missed all the Pasolini movies...Oh well

That Library of Congress Jefferson Building Great Hall is pretty nice looking I think

Finally saw that Smithsonian American Art Museum's Latino Art overview exhibit. There's some good stuff in it, and Kennicott's moaning in the W. Post that the intro caption doesn't magically link all of these US based artists who speak Spanish together, can be ignored, I think. Yea, that's true, but so what.

On another floor I quickly saw the exhibit of black and white US landscape photos. I need to look up who the photographer was who did the photos of sideshow snakeholders and stuff out in the rural west. Impressive and not cliched.

Coming to National Gallery of Art

December 22 at 4:30
December 28 at 2:30

Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris) was released in France on December 20, 1963. Fifty years on, the film retains its appeal and inventiveness. A screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) is weighing an offer to jazz up The Odyssey for a Hollywood mogul (Jack Palance) and trying to fathom why his wife (Brigitte Bardot) no longer likes him. Contempt makes a bold statement on everything from Greek epic to American modernity. “The greatness of the work is not that Godard is nostalgic for Homeric harmony. He knows that ship has sailed. Instead everything, ancient or modern, ‘real’ or ‘unreal,’ has its own stunned dignity, and the movie wants us to see it all—as its people, tragically, cannot. . . . The audacity, we now see, is breathtaking”—Terrence Rafferty. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963, DCP, French, English, German, and Italian with subtitles, 102 minutes

I expect to be at the Dec. 22 screening--if you recognize me, do say hi.

if that's the restored version that played earlier this year at film forum, it's going to look completely awesome

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/12/19/the_ultimate_hate_d_c_essay_of_2013.html

Nothing too new about it really, or about Weigel's take on it.