Brad Pitt Has Your Secret Shit: Rolling DC

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.

Cine-Concert: The General at NGA
Sunday, January 12 at 6:30 p.m.
Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926, 78 minutes
preceded by Drummer of the 8th (Thomas Ince, 1913) and The House with Closed Shutters ( D.W. Griffith, 1910), approximately 25 minutes
World premiere of orchestral score by Andrew Simpson

Another movie I want to see -- this time at the tiny Library of Congress Pickford Theatre as part of their winter jazz film series that starts this friday night

JANUARY 17 at 7 PM
Mickey One (1965) – Directed by Arthur Penn
Hollywood’s version of a French new wave film stars Warren Beatty as a paranoid comic on the run from the mob. Superb soundtrack features Eddie Sauter’s imaginative score with featured soloist Stan Getz (93 min). We will be showing a 35mm print. Introduction by Tim Masters, WPFW-FM

The General was fun. Looks like some other interesting stuff at coming up at NGA, esp. Videofreex, a Ondes Martenot doc, and Czech animated shorts

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2014/01/17/a-look-at-the-library-of-congress-jazz-film-friday-series/

Noir weekend (Feb. 1st and 2nd) coming up at NGA

Saturday at 2:00 p.m., the Gallery presents T-Men followed by Raw Deal, introduced by historian Max Alvarez. In The Crime Films of Anthony Mann (2014), Alvarez brings essential scholarship to an aspect of Mann’s career often overshadowed by his 1950s westerns. A composite story based on Treasury Department case files, T-Men’s quasi-documentary narrative is brilliantly served by Hungarian-born cinematographer John Alton, whose camera placement and lighting seem the very definition of film noir. In Raw Deal — again with John Alton’s expressionistic camera and lights — gangster Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe) breaks out of jail with social worker Ann (Marsha Hunt) as a hostage.

Sunday at 4:30, the Gallery kicks off its series Recovered Treasure: UCLA’s Festival of Preservation with Gun Crazy, with an introduction by Rebecca Prime, author of Hollywood Exiles in Europe: The Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture (2014). One of the finest mid-century noirs, this Bonnie-and-Clyde tale of two outlaw lovers — a naïve gun-crazed war veteran and a carnival sharpshooter whose inner anomie is exceeded only by their amour fou — was adapted in part by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo.

KRAAAAFTWEEEERRRKKK
who's going????

2nd show added! $55 plus service charge. Enjoyed them last time but think I'm gonna pass this time.

I got a ticket to the 6pm show which is nice bcz I won't be super tired. It was $67 when all was said n done.

Went to ramen place Daikaya last night. Eh its ok, but like with Toki Underground I think its been over-hyped. Also, maybe its just cheapskate me, but I think some suburban pho places (yea I know, different food and nationality) offer better tasting soup at half the price.

still haven't made it to toki underground

IF i don't have any health mini-crises, may be down for Prez Day wkend. Pondering going to Cibo Matto at 930.

some people are ramen people some are pho people

My 2 current non-soup faves (though they have good soup too) are the Laotian food at Bangkok Golden in Seven Corners, Falls church near Home Depot (not far from Eden Center) and the Sichuan place a few doors down, Hong Kong Palace.

can vouch for Bangkok Golden

kogiya: believe the hype

what I initially wrote off as a honey pig knockoff turned out to be the best korean bbq I've ever had

Will have to try it. Have you had Korean tofu soup at Lighthouse Tofu (which also has a Korean name too I think)? Pretty good.

Afrofuturism: Artists on Three Continents Explore “Black to the Future”
Exhibition and Short Films
Monday, 3 February – Friday, 28 February 2014
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/ver/en12153732v.htm

Gallery hours: M-Th 9-5; F 9-3

The hours are so limited. Not sure how I will see this...

Watched an out-of-print I think dvd of 1950 noir Gun Crazy that's at the NGA on Sunday. Nicely shot (ha )

waaaaht

love that movie

4:30 Sunday

I've seen it on TCM in the last year...but a restored version in 35mm is damn tempting.

Gonna have to miss today's offering:
Saturday at 2:00 p.m., the Gallery presents T-Men followed by Raw Deal, introduced by historian Max Alvarez.

so is yr burg mobbed on Prez Day weekend? I'm thinking any weekend after the spring thaw will be worse, but whadda i know.

hotel prices that weekend look pretty typical for winter - any time before cherry blossom week is going to be pretty sedate

if anything a lot of people skip town president's day weekend, since many kids have the following week off

Snow Emergency parking rules going into effect at 6:30....

no shelter buses tonight, either. :/

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2014/02/12/a-murdered-deli-owner-lives-on-at-heaven-h/

I think the below M. Yglesias statement is an exaggeration

Like most people residing in the nation’s capital, I spent a healthy chunk of my weekend binge-watching House of Cards. In my case, I binged all the way from the beginning since I inexplicably missed the first season.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/02/netflix_s_original_series_it_s_beating_hbo_without_being_better_than_hbo.html

lol everyone in my cube sector watched it

i did not

My gf and I did not. Haven't polled the cube sector near me or my family, though no family members have mentioned watching it

I think there's a significant audience in DC and in Maryland that watches Scandal and not House of Cards, so his "most people" comment is not accurate. Plus there are those who aren't watching either

i mean yeah

moved back here just in time to see Los Angeles Plays Itself

ha

sweet Jesus, not a room in the District to be had under $180/night two weekends from now

airbnb signup i guess

(that is, I'm not staying in the far NE)

You can get a room at the Holiday Inn in Alexandria across from Eisenhower Metro for 100 a night but then you'd be in Alexandria.

yeah Arlington is an option tho. "Spring" tourists gonna be disappointed at those bare cherry trees.