Brad Kanus

Brad Kanus' take on the election

You asked for it, so I'm posting it.  This piece was done for a blog that is aimed at people outside of the beltway and is overtly political.  As you might be able to tell - I'm a conservative.  This was written literally the next day, so it doesn't cover turnout problems like I think they should be covered, but I don't have time to go into it. 

Enjoy...

Bottom Line

Hating Obama wasn't enough.  Voters had to be in love with Romney.  Bad candidates don't beat bad incumbents.  Running on the "I'm not him" theme doesn't work. 

Do you understand what I'm saying here?  I'll explain.

The primary system is not flawed.  The order in which the states have their primaries is... at least as it goes for Republicans.  Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primary voters do not make good decisions when it comes to Republicans.  They gave us McCain and now Romney - two empty suits with about as much charisma as a corpse.  I almost forgot Bob Dole!  As long as the primaries are aligned this way Republicans are going to nominate boring candidates who will lose.

In this day and age it's not enough to just be smart and successful when running for president.  You have to be a character.  It's a popularity contest and you have to be likable.  Just ask John Kerry.

Like John Kerry, Romney was seen as a rich guy whose only reason for wanting to be president was so that he could say he was president.  Just another accolade to add to their resume.  Voters didn't buy it. They weren't inspired by it and they showed it.

Voters have to see a real person up there.  Governor Christie of New Jersey is a perfect example.  You may not agree with everything he does, but you like him.  His heavily Democratic state loves him.  They didn't hire his politics, they hired him. 

Are you going to get emails in the future with quotes from Romney?  No.  Do you know why?  Because the guy doesn't say anything worth quoting.  Think about Reagan.  Think about the many things he said that you still see everywhere.  Do you see the difference between the two men?  That's what I'm talking about.

Romney needed people to be a big fan of him and he couldn't make that happen.  He relied too heavily on people not like Obama and it didn't work.  It never works.  No matter what, people always vote FOR somebody, not just against the incumbent.

One more thing.... Romney wasn't all that much different than Obama on many of the issues.  He really never separated himself with specific examples of what he'd do differently.  Why fire the guy you have right now if the replacement isn't going to be much different?

It's NOT the Economy, Stupid!

The Romney campaign and media put all their eggs in the economy basket and it didn't work.  Why?  Because the economy is not as bad is looks on paper.  There's a difference between what the math tells you that you should be seeing and what you actually see.

There's a lot of gloom and doom on the economy in the news, but there isn't much visual evidence of it in our own neighborhoods.  We like to say things are bad, but instead of waiting in line for scarce jobs or food, we wait in lines for hours to buy new iPhones.  It doesn't matter what people claim their "top issue" is when the pollsters call and ask.  If they aren't truly living that reality they won't respond to appeals for their vote on that issue. 

Yes, there's "high unemployment," but isn't it really just "higher than it was unemployment?"  It's not like there isn't page after page of jobs in the back of every newspaper in the country today.  The opportunity to work is there and the people who aren't working are still getting paid.  Yes - even those without jobs are still making money thanks to one extension of jobless benefits after another. 

I believe the president did a masterful job of turning that high unemployment number into a bonus for him.  Millions of Americans are without a job, but they aren't without an income.  You can bet many Republicans out there have benefitted from the giveaway and either stayed home or voted for Obama.  They may tell everyone who will listen that Obama is a radical Muslim terrorist, but they'll vote to get paid to do nothing in the privacy of a voting booth every single time. 

The Democrats brilliantly played the unemployment benefits game putting Republicans in a position where they couldn't say no.  Pundits on the right saw each one of those unemployed persons as a likely voter due to their lack of a job.  Obama's people saw each one of them as a vote for the president because they were bought and paid for by unemployment benefits.  Things aren't that bad if you can draw a check for 99 weeks for doing absolutely nothing. 

The fact is, "poor" doesn't mean what it used to.  Talking about the economy was a waste of time for Republicans.  Nobody is hurting that bad - except Detroit... we know all about Detroit.  When the rest of America looks like Detroit, then you can talk about the economy.  Until then, find a new topic.

Blame Bush

If buying the unemployed off with incredible jobless benefits didn't provide enough voters for Obama, the massive amount of new federal employees Bush hired before he left office did.

You may remember when Bush basically doubled the size of the federal government after 9/11 by creating the Department of Homeland Security and hundreds of thousands of war related jobs.  Federal workers don't do a good job paying their taxes, as we have found out, but they do vote and they vote for Democrats even when they have a Republican to thank for their job. 

All these people were likely Democrats before they were hired by the government, however they probably didn't vote as frequently as they do now. 

The Perfectly Timed Storm

Conspiracy theorists will likely claim that Obama created Hurricane Sandy in order to hold onto the presidency.  They're always making something out of a coincidence. While they may be wrong about the the president's ability to create natural disasters, they're right about how voters would react to one so close to the election.

Change is hard enough for people, adding a little chaos to the mix makes it almost impossible.  I think it's completely plausible that tens of thousands of voters in Pennsylvania decided to stick with Obama based on the chaotic aftermath of Sandy.  The same goes for Virginia.  People are  still a little freaked out around here and the president did a good job calming them down. 

I hate to say it, but the storm was a very good thing for the president.

Old People Vote - Don't Scare Them

Congressman Paul Ryan is a really smart, good guy.  However, he scares the hell out of old people.

I'm not old, but I know people who are and they don't mess around when it comes to their entitlements.  Yes, Medicare, Social Security and a whole host of other programs are in trouble and will likely implode during our lifetime (I'm planning accordingly and you should be too).  That doesn't mean somebody running for president should talk about fixing the problem.  It's better not to say a word until after you've won the election.  Talking about it before you win is a sure way to lose.

Congressman Ryan sat next to Joe Biden on TV and looked to every grey-haired geezer in the country like a young punk trying to steal their money.  Bad move.  Romney needed pick someone older... more representative of what the "likely voter" looks like.  Senator Portman would have been the better choice.

Other Factors

There are a lot of things that made minor contributions to Romney's loss that I don't want to go into great detail about, but are worth mentioning.  Here they are.

Star Struck 30 year-olds vote how their favorite actors and singers tell them to.  My generation is the dumbest yet and they're starting to vote consistently.  Scary.

Facebook and other social media outlets likely delivered millions of people to the polls who would have probably forgotten or not cared about the election.  This was truly the first year of the "digital campaign" and you'll see people really start realizing it in about a week.  Republicans will never rule this medium.

Romney and Obama knew who was going to win a week ago.  FoxNews and Drudge spent a lot of time trying to convince everyone of the worthiness of outlier polls showing Romney winning.  The truth - most polls had Obama up the entire time and they were right.  When Romney started quoting "internal polls" veterans of election trade knew it was curtains for ol' Mitt.  Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio were never in play. 

Negative campaigning works.  Romney could have come closer had he been meaner.  I still don't think he could have won since none of us really liked him all that much. 

What's Next?

Life is not going to be easy for Obama going forward.  The house is still strongly controlled by Republicans and the Senate remains pretty much the same.  Nothing can get done legislatively in the next two years.   If the senate flips in 2014 the president will be in real trouble.

What is most likely to happen is what happened when Clinton won his second term - lots of investigations.  Republicans are going to make life miserable for Obama by bogging him down with one investigation after another.  They won't be working on legislation, so they'll have plenty of time to make a federal case (literally) out of everything. 

Obama's best people are going to leave in droves starting in the summer of 2013.  This always happens in a president's second term.  The worker bees who spent the last four years making just $140,000 are going to cash in their access for millions as lobbyists.  Like Bush's and Clinton's stripped down staffs at the end of their terms, Obama's is going to be a hodgepodge of rookies and has-beens who won't be serving the president, or the country, very well.

Democrats are tasked with getting rid of Biden before 2016.  He's the best chance Republicans have in 2016 - if you know what I mean.  Biden has no idea he can't win.  Democrats have to either convince him not to run (very hard) or figure out how to fire him (very very hard).  Either way, you're going to see an odd dance start very soon and the only one out of step will be Biden.

Bill Clinton is going to become no friend of Obama.  Clinton's ego is bruised and he's going to make things tough for the guy who managed to win two terms and is building a better legacy than his.   I suspect this is going to be very fun to watch.

Republicans will look really hard at themselves and at their ideals as a party.  They will not change a thing because they are incapable of understanding where they went wrong. 

The rest... well we'll just have to sit back and see what happens.

Out of Office Messages - Still Useful?

I know, my title sounds like I'm a writer for a woman's magazine.  It's the over-done subject followed by a question about it.  "Couples Therapy - Worth it or Worthless?"  I hate my life.

I like it the other away around but Jerry Seinfeld pretty much screwed that up for the rest of us, now didn't he... His question followed by subject is now off limits.  Get caught writing or saying "what's the deal with metro fare increases," and some jackass is bound to ask "who let Seinfeld in here?"  I hate that he completely ruined a good way to introduce subject matter in a comedic - or non-comedic - way.   In the end, we will all realize that Seinfeld was simply evil.

Where were we?  Out of Office Messages...

Tell me if this  has happened to you.  You send an email to a friend and you get an instant email message back with the subject line "Out of Office:" followed by whatever your original subject line was.  Real quick here - if you know someone is out of the office, make the subject "banging dudes" so it reads "Out of Office: banging dudes."  Yes, I'm 13 years-old.

Back on track....

You do know what I'm talking about here - the out of office reply you get in return to your email.  Usually the body gives some clue as to how long the person is out and other pertinent information that we'll get to in a minute.

Here's the the thing that irks me - your friend responds to your email literally seconds after the "out of office" email hits your box.  He may be "out of the office," but he's on his Blackberry.  So that makes me wonder why he as the "out of office" feature even switched on if he's answering emails from his Blackberry which is pretty much how he does things 99 percent of the time.  The auto responder "out of office" emails are just frustrating, useless emails cluttering up my inbox.

Let's go back in time before smart-phones and visit an era when the "out of office reply" was truly needed.  Back in 1996 when you went on vacation there was no reliable way to check your email.  Hell, if you had a two hour conference across the street, your email sat there festering in your inbox until you made your way back to your desk.  The person who sent it had no idea if you'd seen it and you had no idea it was there when you were gone.  Basically it was like your worst nightmare times infinity.  It was literally like the days before caller ID - pure insanity.

The "out of office" feature was very useful back then.  It let people know that you weren't going to be at your desk to see the email that was sent for a period of time. This allowed the sender to make a decision as to what to do next whether it be contact someone else, or just sit on the situation until you came back.  It worked beautifully for people back in the days when email access was very limited.  The key here being - email access. 

Nowadays - you can get your email in a cave in Chile or on a mountain in Tibet.  You may be "out of the office," but you can read your email.  Some people don't even have a physical office in a building - they're never in an office to claim they'll be "out of the office."  And that brings me to the quesetion of the usefulness of the email "out of office" auto responder.

Most of the time these days the "out of office" message says something like "I'll have limited access to email," which really means "I'm going to check my phone for emails in the morning, at lunch and then again before dinner."  So basically you're connected.  There's no need to warn people you might not get back to them about an important issue because you'll be reading your email while you are out of the office. 

Very few people literally turn off the phone during their vacation and the ones that do - aren't in positions where it matters.  Very important people who won't have access to email usually make plans to have the important stuff routed through to the right person while they are gone.  However, most of the time those important people stay connected because they are in fact - important. 

I have to go back to my original premise, though.  Most of the time people respond when they are out if you have a sufficiently important topic of your email.  The auto responder only tells people without an important issue that their unimportant issue is for sure getting ignored for the next however many days.  It serves no real purpose other than that.

I don't know... when I wrote this post in my head yesterday it was really going somewhere and today it's just kind of flat... crap. 

 The bottom line is that you shouldn't use the "out of office" message if you're going to be responding to my emails like you always do.  Being "out of the office" has zero to do with whether or not you'll be answering emails.  The message should read "not reading emails, f*ck off until next week."

 

Screw the monuments - Squirrels are where it's at!

If you're like me,  you spend some time outside running in an attempt to reduce the size of your fat ass.  If you're not like me, you spend some time outside running because you're healthy and want to stay that way.  Either way you may have noticed a rather odd, but common, phenomenon involving tourists.  I call them "squirrel frenzies."

Just today I saw about three dozen women huddled closely around something on the ground on the South Lawn.  From the sheer excitement (shrieks of joy) emanating from the group I was sure Mathew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling were wrestling shirtless in the middle of them.  Curious as to what was going on and eager to compare my biceps with McConaughey's I rushed over to see what the fuss was about.  When I got there, it was a f*cking squirrel.  There were thirty women standing only yards from the home of the most powerful man on the planet and they were losing their shit over a squirrel. 

When school was in a few months ago I saw a whole class of high schoolers sprint across Penn. Ave in front of the White House to gawk at a squirrel sitting at the end of a bench near their tuckered out teacher.  I thought they were running from gun shots the way they were moving.  These kids were from Manassas - it's not like they don't have a billion squirrels in that godforsaken place.

Really, it's not like squirrels are exclusive to Washington, D.C.  They are found in all 50 states.  Squirrels are like Cubs fans - you find them everywhere and you usually ignore them. 

I don't get what the big deal is, but these people go nuts for them.  Spending upwards of $250 a night to stay in DC to take pictures of some nasty inbred squirrel is insane.  You can see real dinosaur bones at the Smithsonian, but these people are mesmerized by a miniature mammal that eats stale bread. 

I'm guessing a man could make some good money if he trained a squirrel to sit on people's shoulders to pose for pictures.  It's not an impossible idea.  "Twiggy" is a squirrel who water skis.  No shit - click HERE.  If they can ski, they can probably sit on command.  Better yet, bring Twiggy down here and let him tear it up at the reflecting pool.  The monuments and museums would be ghost towns if you did that.

I guess the most disturbing part of all this was that I found out THIS site exists. 

Vacations on Facebook look so much better

It's recess in my industry, so I've had some time on my hands to surf Facebook.  Okay, I'll be honest - I surf Facebook even when there's work to do.  You do the same thing, but tell people you only look when things are slow.  Why do we lie? 

Anywho...

Obviously a lot of people are on vacation this time of year.  Americans wait until it's hot to go somewhere warm.  To be honest, I'd rather do this whole "vacation season" December through February when going to work not only blows, but sucks as well.  

Where was I?

Vacation and Facebook...

So about every nine seconds someone posts a pic from their vacation this time of year.  It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't all look completely awesome.  I swear some people have hired a photographer just so their pictures can top everyone else's on Facebook.  I mean, you have to wonder how someone gets their kid, a dolphin, blue whale, a puppy and Ryan Seacrest in the same shot with perfect focus in the best light while bobbing along on a catamaran piloted by a drunk Colombian sea captain.

My wife and I went on vacation a day earlier than we told the rest of the world so we could set up some shots of our kid on the beach and deliver them on the day we told everybody we'd be there like it was natural.  It took the better part of a day to get the one shot we thought would make everyone else jealous on Facebook.  Was hair and makeup overboard?  No.  The fans, lighting and large light reflectors seemed to bother the other people near us, so maybe we'll reconsider that next year.  Although, if you're spending a few grand on lighting, what's another few bucks on drinks to smooth over relations with the other beach goers?

You think I'm exaggerating, don't you?  I am, a little.  You should have seen my wife and I poring over a day's worth of photos trying to find that perfect shot that would be posted to Facebook to generate envy in our "friend's" hearts.  We actually got in a fight over it. I won.  She thinks she won.  We didn't have an official score keeper so I'm going to call it a draw (my kid does call me "Mr. F*cknut" now, which is a little collateral damage we're trying to fix this week).  The good news is that I almost got a MacBook Pro out of it seeing as how a little Photoshop retouch might have made things easier.  It's tough to get a a 2 year-old to hold a six pound lobster like she just caught it in the surf with her getting pinched a few times - Photoshop would be a lot easier on everyone.  Especially since we're doing a pose with a shark next year.

I think a little investment in your photo equipment is worth it if you want to stay competitive among your Facebook "friends."  We may have to shift the money we spend on vacation to the photo production side and away from the quality destination column.  With the right crew you can make Ocean City look like Bermuda or St. Barts.  Spend the money where it counts - the illusion that you're on the best vacation ever. 

Tell me I'm wrong. 

You can't.

See you in the trenches.  I'll be the guy holding the camera... screaming at my wife and child.

Capitol Hill - Impervious to Gentrification, Progress

Before the Nats game last night I met a friend on "The Hill" for a drink at a well known bar across the street from Eastern Market.  My journey through the hood got me to thinking about how far the area had come since my first journey there in 2001.  The answer was simple - it has possibly gone backwards.

Tunnicliff's now has ahi tuna on the menu and sleek downtown-ish feel inside, but is an outlier when it comes the neighborhood as a whole.  It's like the part of DC that time forgot.  Better yet, it's the part of DC the city forgot to update, maintain or care about. 

I've never been all that enamored with Easter Market - it's mostly people selling shit other people threw away the day before and the market smells like an open sewer.  The overall feel of the place is bathroom in Mexico-ish. 

I'm one of the few people not blinded by the faux visceral experience of shopping at a market like Easter Market.  Privileged white people think its neat to pretend to go to the market like billions of poor people around the world who are forced to do so due to severe poverty, lack of a strong centralized government and a general absence of the sophisticated distribution of foodstuffs we enjoy in America.  It's a wonder people have not grown wise to the place, but then again there's a pride inside people for things I'll never understand (think Starbucks people over-paying for coffee and being happy about it to the point of incessant bragging).

My walk through the area was as it was in 2001 - a little scary, but mostly just dirty, dingy and out of date.  Every other house was tended to while all the others looked rundown and uncared for.  Nothing screamed "people here love this neighborhood." It's almost 12 years later and nothing much has changed on Capitol Hill while many other neighborhoods in DC have completely reinvented themselves (U Street corridor, H Street etc et al). Why?

I'm guessing it has something to do with the transient nature of hill staff and others who choose to live there.  They don't buy, they rent for a bit and then move on.  Landlords collect rent checks, refuse to reinvest in their properties and feel no pain as places to lay your head near the Capitol are in high demand.  General infrastructure such as sidewalks, curb and gutter are the city's problem and only fixed when some kind of political or property value pressure is applied.  I don't think Capitol Hill can bring either of those. 

Where's the investment in real estate you see everywhere else?  Big mixed use buildings so plentiful everywhere else have evaded the one area they'd be most likely to flourish - a place where people need to rent, not buy.  I know that the process is slow, but is it decades slow?  Other neighborhoods have proved it doesn't take that long. 

Now I know why when my Capitol Hill friends come visit me in Clarendon they practically race home to start packing.  What's convenience matter when you have to sacrifice any hint of quality? 

The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful are so much better than you - the short version

I've always passively viewed The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful People list as it has come out over the years.  I'm curious to see who made it and if I know them.  That's about it.  I didn't used to even read their bios - the pictures were good enough for me.  The winners of the genetic lottery would leave my mind just as they entered it - quickly and without much effort.

This year I got bored and started reading the bios supplied with the pictures.  Holy shit - these people are not only better looking than me, they're just plain better than me in every way.  Here's my rundown of the top 10.  If you like these, let me know and I'll do the next 10.  If not... well... I guess I'll just have to take more pictures of people being asses on the metro.

 1. Max Engling - Max doesn't just play a model on TV - he's one in real life.  Well, not anymore, but he was a legit model at one point. When he's not saving African children with AIDS or building an orphanage from scratch for Ukrainian kids, he's running an internship program for people with intellectual disabilities (read: people from New Mexico).  He's the guy your wife dreams about when she dreams about guys.   Max might save a child from a burning building at any moment, so keep your eye on him at all times.

2. Carolyn Amirpashaie - Have dark features?  Indian or Middle Eastern?  Hot?  If you said yes to all of those you're a Kim Kardashian look alike even if you don't look anything like her.  Poor Carolyn gets saddled with the Kardashian label and the worst part is that she's actually prettier than any of those vapid... I'll stop there.  Carolyn never goes out (whatever).  Loves sitting on her couch and doing nothing (whatever).  She's also very good at soccer (a recurring theme this year).  Oh, and she's getting married at Vineyard in Virginia - because that's what beautiful people do.

3. Kristen Callaway - Heir to the Callaway Golf fortune. Just kidding.  I think.  She looks a little like Tara Reid.   Went to church with Florida State football coaching legend, Bobby Bowden.  Hangs out in New York City on the weekends and goes clubbing in the Meat Packing District because that's what mid-level Hill staffers can afford to do.  Oh, she's also going to Spain and Italy, stopping at Valencia, Florence, Rome and Corsica over the August break because Legislative Assistants on the Hill do that kind of shit too.  Well, the pretty ones do it seems.  The fat ones spend August living the term "staycation" at the Portrait Gallery. 

(Don't throw yourself off the building yet - we've only hit the first three people better than  you in every way possible. We're just getting started with the brutal murder of your ego.)

4. Julian Malasi - This guy wears skinny ties - what else is there to say?  From Albania and likely speaks whatever language they speak there since the article says he's "multilingual."  Has a dog he jogs with named "Rhett Butler" because not only is he better looking than you - he's much more clever and in shape (he plays soccer too) than you.  Oh yeah - he has a twin brother that is better than you in every way as well. His name is "Euclid" and he fathered Geometry - whatever that means (you can google it, I'm not lying). 

5. Warren Wright - High cheek bones, strong jaw and a pilot's license - no woman has a chance at escaping Mr. Wright and we haven't even gotten to the good parts yet.  He's a former Coast Guard helicopter pilot who probably saved everyone in Alaska's life twice and then let Kevin Costner and Aston Kutcher make a movie about his life.  He would have starred in the movie, but they wanted the audience to concentrate on the plot, not the pecs.  He's applied to the Judge Advocate General (JAG for you TV watchers) just in case there's somebody left out there that can't "handle the truth." 

6. Marian White-  She's a Southern beauty who's just moonlighting on the Hill until she dashes off to Boston for a Masters in being better than you (it's a two year program).  When she's not turning heads in committee meetings, she's a gourmet chef who supplies "dinner parties" with her irresistable  "South Carolinian cobblers and mac 'n' cheese."  Who under 50 has "dinner parties?"  Fabulous people - that's who. 

7.  Alyssa Dack - The nauseating facts are simple - Duke, Turkey, Italy and hikes Shenandoah like it's her job.  Claims she's happy to be single, but we all know that's just a cover for having 20 dates lined up for the next week (your Match.com profile hasn't been viewed by anyone in a week).  Watches "West Wing" because it's what cool people do when their not outside making us jealous. 

8.  Samantha Dezur - Very hot.  So hot in fact that she was on a TV show on the Style Network. Masters from Georgetown.  Had a dream to work at a fashion magazine - checked that box already and moved on (her bucket list actually has things crossed out - you're stuck on "see Niagara Falls"). Never goes out, but hits the gym and reads a lot (she goes out - don't believe for a second she doesn't).  Says she's a Libertarian which means if you have questions, she has Ron Paul answers.

9. Leslie Rath - Has a horse - hunts foxes from the top of it when she's in Florida at her parent's Orange plantation.  While you can't hardly afford to board yourself in a 600 sqft apartment in a shitty part of town - this Scheduler is paying someone to play with her horse while she's farting around here in DC.  Your family plays scharades when they get together - her family pretends to be 19th century British Aristocrats and reenacts royal hobbies on horseback.  I have a feeling "work" is something she does when she's not swimming around in her piles of family money. 

10. Rep. Michele Bachmann - She's hot right up until the point she starts talking - and I'm a conservative guy with conservative ideals, just so you know.  Pretends she shops at Marshalls and somehow had the option of becoming Swiss (you can't even get decent swiss cheese).  She's so much better than you, she can say whatever she wants and retain her seat.  You can't even express your opinion at Thanksgiving without being sent to the kid's table.  So magical is she, that her husband and her can turn gay people straight.  You're probably responsible for turning at least one person the opposite direction without meaning to. 

----------------

Truthfully, I wanted to do all 50 at once, but I was getting pretty depressed at #8... if you want more, I will suck it up and press on.  Just let me know.

Uber is Pro-Choice

Settle down Tebow fans, I'm not talking about Roe V. Wade here.  I'm talking Black vs. SUV. 

I'd like to say I personally inspired the change in Uber's booking options... so I am.  I told Alex at Uber months ago that there should be some way to dial up exactly what kind of car you need based on factors like number of riders, age of riders (babies) and breed of riders (dogs!).  Alex patted me on the head, told me to be patient and then handed me a shiny spoon to play with.  He knows how to keep me occupied. 

It is likely that I was not the only one who uses Uber that found themselves in a pickle on a Friday night with too many guests and not enough car to haul them to the next bar.  Piling five people into a Town Car is not only against the rules, it defeats the purpose of Uber - riding in style at a price slightly higher than that of convenience.   You are not a pimp if you roll up to the club and the ol' clown car act ensues.  Unless you're clown pimp, and that's how your peeps roll.

Because Uber seem to be one of those progressive companies that follows a corporate philosophy of bending over backward for customers (even mouthy, needy ones like me), they worked to find a solution to the problem quickly.  If you've pulled up your Uber app lately you'll see that there's an option to pick  "black" or "suv" - problem solved. 

If you request an SUV it's more expensive.  It makes sense given that you pay more per person in a taxi and if you had to order two Uber cars it would be doubly expensive.  This is cheaper than ordering two cars and when is the last time you got a taxi on demand that can fit six people?

The big question - do you get an SUV for four or do you crowd the Town Car?  I don't like sitting in the front seat - even in a taxi.  It's weird.  Plus it kind of defeats my main purpose for using Uber - comfort and style. 

Although, some of you like Uber simply because you can dial up a reliable car when you need one and you couldn't care less about what it does for your image (you are a superior human being to me).  In that case, you don't really care about riding four to a car. 

I guess the question of "do you, or don't you with four?" will be the next big dilemma of our generation.  How will you answer it?

Sweetest Ride for Hire in DC!

I was dining with the family at Lincoln last night (not great, not bad - just tapas) and the sweetest ride in DC pulled up in front of the Marriott across the street.  I couldn't help but leave the table and go take a photograph of the  perfect awesome riding on four wheels.

Click on the picture for a larger, better picture of the coolest car in town.

Your eyes aren't deceiving you - that's a stretched convertible limo. 

Here's a closer look.

Sophisticated, but comfortable.  When you want to travel to that State Dinner in style, but want to let your hair blow carelessly in the wind on the way there. 

What kind of people would hire such a ride?  These kind of people...

Great Craigslist Ad - Clever Devil

In the big city you use Craigslist for everything from prostitution to prostitution  furniture.  People are strange and they post some crazy stuff.  Luckily people send me that stuff. 

Today I got an email from a person who clicked on the "volunteers" link hoping to see if there were charities looking for Marine Corp. Marathon runners.  The first listing read:

sex addicts can talk about there problem - (vienna)

Besides the obvious use of the wrong "their" it seems innocent enough.  Okay, not at all.  If you click on the post it reads:

"for the weman who are addicted to sex we can talk about it"

So much for the formalities associated with an actual support group... This guy lets it be known that he'll talk to you about your problem - if you're a "weman." 

I suppose he's just being nice and just wants to talk. He's got no hidden agenda at all.  He's not a bar tender leading an AA meeting at all - just a guy looking to help some "weman" who are addicted to sex. 

I'm laughing my ass off at this, but I'm sure you don't see it as being as funny as I do.  I've always had this question about sex addict support groups in real life.  What possible worse therapy format could someone come up with?  Well, other than having heroin addicts meet in a poppy field.  You've got ten horned up people who are like minded and they sit around talking about how horny they are... I just don't see how  they don't all leave and go have sex with each other given their propensity to do such things with complete strangers who share their sex drive and willingness to take risks... boggles my mind.  This ad is a caricature of what I imagine the whole thing is like.

Never mind, go back to work - I'm just weird.

How my gym locker room taught me about the crap women must endure from men

As I've often noted on this blog - I'm a disgusting fatass.  However, I do workout almost every day in hopes that something magic will happened and my body will only pay attention to my lethargic workouts and not the three sandwiches from Jimmy John's I eat after them.   I am that stereotypical guy who works out and never sees any positive changes.  Always in the gym - always fat. 

The Jimmy John's anecdote is true, by the way.  On Tuesday of this week I had a Hunter's Club, BLT and a slim ham and cheese (treated the ham and cheese with Hellman's mayo packets I have stashed in my desk pantry - always steal them if you can).  When my wife asked why lunch was so expensive I told her I bought two interns lunch.  That was a stupid move on my part. We don't have interns where I work and I had to invent two college students out of thin air when my wife asked me details about the lunch.  Now I'm having to invent an entire summer's worth of stories about two nonexistent interns so that I don't get caught lying about a $15 lunch.  FML.

Anywho...

When I work out at lunch I have to use the gym's locker room.  Pretty normal deal in most places, but not in DC.  It's no secret that DC is the gayest place on earth.  Per capita there are more homosexual men in DC than anywhere else in the United States.  There's not a thing wrong with that and I'm actually proud to live in such a diverse community. HOWEVER, it also means you have to deal with the fact that you might be pursued by a man, and that's something that is very foreign to a Texas boy like me. 

I'm very modest in the locker room.  I've got nothing to be proud of and thus nothing to show off.  I stop just short of wrapping a towel around my clothed body and taking my pants off and putting on my shorts under the cover so that nobody laughs, or gets sick.  I wear my wedding ring and make sure I do whatever it takes to show everyone that I'm not trolling for steam room shenanigans - shenanigans we all know happen in DC gym locker rooms (God I hope women do the same things in their locker room... in my mind they do). 

I'm not interested and that doesn't matter because men are pigs.

These guys don't care that I'm married (some say it's actually a turn on) or that I'm not fit, they still sit there and stare waiting for me get undressed.  They follow me around pretending to brush their hair in the mirror next to me or enter the shower next to mine after they've clearly already showered.  They'll chat me up while I'm trying to get dressed and they're wearing nothing but flip flops - naked and free as a toddler in an Arkansas Wal-Mart.  In the weight room the constant - incessant staring and coincidental meetings at every single machine or water fountain continue along with empty chat about my workout and what schedule I'm on.  The whole thing just creeps me out and makes me generally uncomfortable.  So much so, I now make an effort to go to the gym at 11:00 a.m. so that I beat the crowd.   It's terrible. 

So the other day when I was staring a hole through some poor coed on the metro I realized that I'm the same kind of asshole as the guys in my gym locker room.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had done every single little annoying thing those men in the gym had done, but I had done them to women - pretty much since I figured out that getting cooties was a small price to pay to touch some boobies. 

It was pretty disturbing to realize I had made women feel like that before.  It's just so creepy how we stare and hover and pant like dogs every time a woman crosses her legs, bends over or faces a gust of wind in a dress.  We stand too close, make stupid idle conversation and go out of our way to force interactions.  Our advances are so sexually driven that any claim to the contrary is just plain laughable.  We are terrible!

What's worse is that I only get exposed to this at the gym from time to time.  Women get this treatment all day every day wherever they go.  Now I know why they are in a shitty mood most of the time - they tired of our BS stalking behavior. 

It's a real eye-opener when it happens to you.  You really get a sense of what you put people through.  With that said - I'm not going to stop.  There's a real chance that that girl's blouse may pop open during hard stop on the metro and I'll be damned if I'm going to miss it.  Married guys don't get much in the way of excitement - we gotta seek it out and make sure we don't miss it.

Please send your hate mail to bradkanus@gmail.com.  

Stop Having the Same Shitty DC Event - STOP IT NOW!

I was at yet another craptastic charity ball/event/gala/whatever you want to call it this weekend and I hit my breaking point.  I can't do it anymore and I can't let you be the next person to hit their breaking point.  I can no longer stand by and let these atrocities go on any longer.  

I go to way too many of these terrible events.  I have done as many as 30 in a year and I average 15.  Most of them suck in the exact same ways, which makes my job here pretty easy.  

It should be noted that my wife does this crap for a living (kinda) and in no way thinks I'm correct with any of my suggestions.  In fact - she thinks I'm wrong about everything, so just assume that's her position from here on out.

Registration

This should not be in any way shape or form like the DMV.  Too often it is.  Long lines filled with people who have no idea WTF is going on or why it's taking so damn long to do something so very simple.  

First of all, get rid of the computers.  The average asshole stuck doing registration duty is not a good enough user of Excel to quickly and efficiently look people up and check them off.  People paying a lot of money to attend your event don't need to sit there waiting while Timmy Ten Thumbs pushes the down arrow a million times because he's laptop retarded and doesn't know how to scroll using a track pad.  Paper is bad for the environment and awesome for event check-ins.  It's faster to swish through five pages of paper than it is to key through a spreadsheet on a laptop.

 Second, your smartest volunteers should be at check-in.  Stupid volunteers can be relegated to carrying things while your smart volunteers interact with the people who write the checks.  If someone is spending $10,000  for a table at your event - don't let the first person they see that night be your top dipshit. 

Third, send out credentials before the event starts.  You'll have check-in 75 percent completed before the event even starts and you can refocus your efforts elsewhere.  It also helps with events where there are auctions and you need people's credit card info on file.  They can also peruse the items before the event and decide where they want to spend their money.

Fourth, if you are doing an auction - make that registration table separate.  Most of the people are only there for the free food and booze, don't make them pretend they're going to bid on something when it's obvious they're not going to.  It's a waste of time.

Cocktail Reception

This is where most events start losing people.  I've walked out of three events in the last three months because the hosts couldn't get this part of the party right.

If you're going to have an open bar, do not pull the shitty little trick of having one bar with one old slow man serving drinks.  We all know the game - you want people to come so you put "open bar" on the invitation.  However, you don't want to pay the price for all the drinks the lushes you invited will drink so you make sure getting a drink is a slow painful process.  People who can afford to drink quickly catch onto your game and they will leave.  This is bad for events where you have auctions - if all the people with money leave because they'd rather go across the street to a bar and have a drink without the wait, then you're left with only the people who showed up for the free shit and God knows they won't bid on your donated trips to Bali. 

Go ahead and have a cash bar - I shelled out a grand for two tickets to your event, I think I can afford to buy a few drinks as well.  Just make sure there are plenty of bars and the people standing behind them know what they're doing.   It's also better for the cause if their bottom line isn't eaten up by the open bar tab.  People who are enticed to attend your event by free booze are likely not the people you want there anyway.  They came to consume, not donate. 

Dinner

YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE A SIT DOWN DINNER!  EVER! There should never be a "dinner" of any kind - heavy hors d'oeuvres and that's it.  Here's why.

Have you ever noticed that they have to shut down the cocktail reception bars, send 80 waiters out with those stupid hand held xylophone-looking thingies and eventually start begging people over the PA system to come and sit down for dinner?  At every event they plead with people to find their seats, but why?  Because nobody wants to stop mingling to go sit down in silence over crappy food for an hour and a half while a bunch of blowhards pat themselves on the back.

The first problem is the food.  Nobody looks forward to "rubber chicken" dinners at these events.  The fact is that no dinner prepared for more than 20 people is ever good.  It's mass produced crap.  You know it, and I know it.  No one has ever left an event at a hotel and said "that's the best meal I have ever had."  In fact - everybody goes out to dinner after the event because they didn't want to touch the crap they were served.  Why would you reward someone who gave you thousands of dollars of their hard earned money with a shitty dinner?  That makes no sense.  Do you think the high dollar donors you so desperately need at your event like eating luke warm chicken and overcooked fish product? I doubt it. 

Another problem with the sit down dinner is that there's always someone at the table with some special food need - whether it be that  they are a vegetarian or have food allergies - and they don't get their plate until everyone else is getting desert.  It never works out and it's just awkward for everyone.  I have a vegetarian coworker who attends a lot of these event with me and she has never had her special meal come out on time.  It ruins the event for her every time.

The second major problem with sit down dinners is that they are a part of a plan to create a captive audience for the organizers who want nothing more in life than to stand on a stage and blabber on and on about themselves.  Nobody looks forward to this part of the program.  Do you know how I know that?  Because people never stop talking while the speakers are speaking!  Does no one get the hint? Are you the greatest volunteer ever?  That's great - add to your mystique by shutting the hell up and getting off the stage.

These people paid your charity lots of money - don't reward them by putting them to sleep with speeches from people nobody cares to hear from. 

Sitting down for dinner brings all the fun to a grinding hault.  All of a sudden you're stuck sharing two bottles of wine with a table of ten people who you may or may not want to be with.  Think about it - often you are sitting with people you know, not people you like.  The people you like are at another table with people they know.  I'd rather have the choice of being with people I like at these events.  Remember - when you're at the table, you're supposed to be listening to the speakers drone on about shit nobody cares about, not engaging in awkward conversations trying to feel out your table mates. 

Why not just let the cocktail reception be the whole event?  Make tables available so the fatasses that just came to eat can sit there and stuff their faces while the rest of us mingle.  Heavy hors d'oeuvres will suffice as long as they keep them coming and don't run out of the good stuff (shrimps!).  Have a small stage where people can pretend to talk to the crowd or conduct a few auctions.  Maybe even put a DJ up there (never a live band - in a two hour event they play for a grand total of 20 minutes - total rip off). 

Let people get hammered - that's what they came for.  Stop with all the formal nonsense of sitting down.  I guarantee you'll have the best event of the year if you do what I've suggested above. 

Nobody in DC walks in a straight line

I wanted this to be a very visual post with smartly edited videos of people walking down the street splashed across the page.  I decided shooting video of random people walking down the street minding their own business was beneath me and pretty much creepy, so I didn't do that.  Besides, that crap makes the page hard to load and eventually the youtube links will magically stop working and you'll hate my blog (if you don't already).

You can actually read this post and go witness my observations yourself, which makes this much more interactive than I originally imagined.  It's also an investment on your end - which means you'll probably end up agreeing with me since you're... well... invested. 

Like many of you I walk the streets of DC daily.  I automatically hate the fact that most of the city's sidewalks are those stupid concrete tiles that are never firmly affixed to the ground on all four corners.  I spend a lot of time making sure I don't end up on my face because the sidewalk doubles as a teeter totter for feet.  Because I'm looking down a lot, I end up almost bumping into people often.  I don't know that the hell they're looking at - remember, I'm watching for Indiana Jones-like booby traps within the public right-of-way - but if they could maintain a line and follow the general rules of the road, we'd not run into each other.  Although when it's a pretty girl I'm thankful for the all of a sudden serendipitous collision.  And that's because I'm a guy and guy's are pigs. 

Lately I have been spending more time watching people walk instead of watching out for loose sidewalk tiles.  The people of DC can't walk in a straight line to save their lives.  And in some cases - it's needed to save their lives!

Given the space, DC people will involuntarily zigzag up and down the block.  They kind of walk toward one point, catch themselves too close to the curb and then gently swerve back toward the buildings lining the street on the other side.  Some people have a more pronounced zigzag changing direction every few feet.  It's fascinating to watch.  You should do it.  But, don't bring a friend because they'll think you're weird.

I do know that there are a tremendous amount of utility access grates on DC sidewalks.  Women in certain types of shoes avoid them as well as pessimistic people who think they'll fall through to their death.  I'm an optimistic person - I think I'll fall through, live and get a major payday and never have to work again.  I guess what I'm saying is that there are some legitimate reasons for changing course on many DC sidewalks. 

More interesting than watching individuals is watching a pair of people walking together and how they do one of two things without fail. 

Some sets of people tend to stray away from each other then back.... then away again and then back.  They do this over and over with some pairs having a more pronounced separation than others.  Imagine the final ski scene in "Aspen Extreme" (the best skiing movie ever made) and that's exactly what it's like.   It's as if one said to the other at the beginning of the block "I'll open'em, you close'em."

Other pairs have one person who is actually locked in on a straight line while the second person just randomly runs into them over and over as if they have no ability to control their proximity to the other person.  It makes you want to punch the guy who can't control his distance to his mate (in the British sense of the word) (that just made this post "international")- it's as annoying to watch as it is to have happen to you. 

Because nobody in DC is walking in a straight line there's a lot of problems with people walking the wrong way down your lane of traffic.  By this I mean - you're in the right lane and they should be in the left lane, but they're not.  It's not a foreign concept (yes it is),  so why don't people adhere to it? 

Even within metro facilities we follow the rules of the road - slower traffic to the right and faster traffic to the left.  It's the DC specific "walk left, stand right" rule borne out of the necessity to have unwritten rules for which tourists are oblivious - giving locals an opportunity to scream at strangers. 

Okay, the rule was actually borne out of the rules of the road as followed in America (where everything we do is right and everyone else is wrong). 

Again, I encourage you to go out and witness this phenomenon yourself and report back to us what you find.  By all means - lose your shit in the comments section below if you disagree with me so we can all certify that I'm 100 percent correct.  And if you don't want to lose your shit in the space provided below, just share your stories of sidewalk aggravation.  Sharing helps all of us heal.

Harry's Tap Room/Market Tavern - Epic Clarendon FAIL!

I was out last night walking the dog and pushing my kid around Clarendon like I do most evenings and noticed something amiss at Market Tavern.  It was empty! On a Thursday!  In Clarendon!  WTF? 

A very warm note posted on the front door explained that they had thrown in the towel - their last meal at that location had been served.  They thanked the people of the neighborhood and complimented the area on it's booming culinary economy.  It was a thoughtful goodbye from what had to be a very angry and frustrated group of investors.  Sadly, that's about the only thing they ever did right there.  Here's the note View this photo.

Let's take a walk through the forest of failure and see what went wrong here.

Market Tavern used to be Harry's Tap Room.  In late 2011 the owner did a major overhaul of the old Harry's decor and transformed the place into Market Tavern.  And by "major overhaul," I mean - they ripped down one wall and painted gigantic cows on the remaining walls.  It was one last effort at saving a place they tried so hard to kill since it opened in 2003.  Unfortunately you can't "unf*ck the football team" as my Mom used to say when making a point about how your past bad showings have a lasting  effect on how people view you.  I think her saying is perfect for the Harry's Tap Room/Market Tavern failure in Clarendon and we'll get to that in a minute.

The thing about Clarendon is that you don't have to try very hard to do well with a restaurant.  Restaurants in out-of-the-way places have to be perfect in order to attract people to their location.  In Clarendon there are too few restaurants for the amount of people who live in the area.  This means that by default restaurants do pretty well.   It also means they aren't charged with doing anything superior in order to survive and that's how an entire zip code ends up with shitty eateries.  Clarendon is dangerously close to being a place known as a model high density walkable community with some of the worst food options around.   

Just look at the crap that survives in Clarendon now.

Cheesecake Factory - it's all the shitty things about American chain restaurant dining gathered in one place.  Everything about the place is designed around increasing the bottom line profit.  Food and people come in a far second and third to the "experience" of being separated from  your money in exchange for what they mislabel as "food."   The restaurant has a warehouse loading dock attached to the building where tons of frozen shit is brought in daily to be prepared by passionless assembly line workers who care about as much about your dining experience as they do about washing their hands after pooping - which is to say, not very much.   The place is packed from the second the doors open until close.

Ri Ra - Shitty food meets astronomical high prices in this modern American take on an Irish pub that leaves both  groups of people embarrassed for themselves.  These assholes even charge a cover!  Packed every second of every day.  I really can't explain how crappy this place really is - there aren't words that exist that do it justice.

Liberty Tavern - Flat-bread-pizza-looking things that resemble what you see on TV, but taste like something you find in a TV dinner box.  Very expensive - poorly designed and executed menu.  On a scale of 1 to blah - it's a blah blah.   There's likely a line out the door to get in as you read this.

The point I'm making here is simple - you got to be very very very very bad to not make it in Clarendon.  And I can tell you, Harry's Tap Room was very very very very very bad.  People will put up with a lot of shit, but there's a limit on how much and for how long.  Right now they're charging $1 for ice in Clarendon.  You might remember me writing about that BS HERE.  That's still not enough to scare customers away.  You have to try hard to fail in Clarendon.

I went to Harry's Tap Room in 2003/2004 several times.  It was expensive as hell, the food was the definition of "whatever" and the service wasn't memorable.  I didn't return until the summer of 2011 and it was more of a coincidence of timing than anything else that led me there.  The wife and I were meeting another couple and lines got crossed so we had a few minutes to kill and were standing outside the place - we decided to sit down and have a drink. 

Our initial reaction was the same - looks like they haven't cleaned or updated this place in ten years.  Ceiling tiles were water stained and wood trim pieces beaten and scarred all over the place.  It was still stupidly expensive and lacked quality and variety on the drink menu.  You got the feeling this was the restaurant the owner forgot he owned and just let it go. 

The couple we met for dinner asked us about our short stop into the place and they echoed our complaints having been there recently as well.  They had decided to try the place again after a five year hiatus from the place.  They explained that they had eaten at every other place on the block a dozen or more times in the past five years, but never there.  Their trip back was no surprise - Harry's Tap Room still sucked. 

Unfortunately the owners really didn't understand how much damage they had done to the location.  When they repackaged the place as "Market Tavern" in late 2011, it failed to fool anyone.  Even if I thought my first trip to Market Tavern was far superior to any experience I had at Harry's Tap Room, the stink couldn't be washed off of the place.  In a mere six months the plane was in a dive the pilot couldn't recover from.  An almost impossible thing happened and I'm still unsure how exactly they managed to screw it up that badly. 

There's a promise of a new concept coming to the location.  I'm going to assume by the tone of the letter posted in the window that the same owner is coming back with yet another restaurant.  I can't think of any other reason to post that letter and promulgate that goodwill unless that's the plan.  Let's hope he does much better than he did this last - and in all honesty, it shouldn't be that hard with the hoards of hungry 20 and 30-somethings with money burning holes in their pockets.

I do have one thought about a new place, though. Where they're going to have trouble is not understanding their customers. Clarendon people love to see and be seen.  They do not like being tucked away upstairs where they can't have one eye on the bar crowd and one on the street - and vice versa.  If they try to use that upstairs space as the main dining area again, they're going to lose again.  I don't know how to fix the problem, but I can tell you that's definitely a problem. 

Someday we'll talk about the bigger picture and how Clarendon's culinary future looks more ballpark concession stand than dining destination.  Too many people concentrated in one place without discriminating palates create a disasterous  food culture.  As Clarendon grows and its restaurant scene refuses to, it's likely to jump the shark in a culinary sense - and that would be the opposite of good.

(I totally wanted this to be way better than it was, but it took my three days to write and I just lost all the will to care about it.  This is as half-assed as Harry's Tap Room was.  My apologies.)

Why can't I wear my umbrella like a sword?

If you're reading this and you're a man you've either had this thought or think it's an awesome idea.  If you're a woman you're thinking to yourself, "What's he talking about? It's cold in here."  The second part of that thought was obligatory given that women are constantly in a state of temperature related discomfort and it would be intellectually dishonest of me to not include what I know is actually going through their mind when describing what's going through their mind.  Got that?  Every woman reading this just put on a sweater. 

Anywho...

Like many days in Washington it's raining  when you go to work in the morning, but not raining when you return home.  Or vice versa.  Either way you're carrying an umbrella with you when you don't need it.  It's a fact a life, but it affects many of us differently.

Because I'm a gigantic fatass I can not fit fully beneath the protective dome of the standard umbrella.  I must use a "golf umbrella" that is more than three feet tall and cumbersome to carry in conjunction with a briefcase or gym bag.  By itself - okay.  It even serves as something to annoyingly practice my golf swing with or push elevator buttons with.  I can even use it to point at stuff or poke people and things that don't need/want to be poked.  By itself the golf umbrella is quite fun - for me. 

When I'm carrying my golf umbrella and a briefcase life sucks.  Riding the metro is hard.  Answering a buzzing BlackBerry is difficult.  Doing anything you need a free hand to pull off is annoying.  Why can't there be a simple solution?

Now, I know you're probably saying, "Lose weight fatass and maybe you can carry around a small umbrella like everyone else!"  You're right, but you're also wrong.  Your solution contains zero percent of the suggested daily amount of fun (that is the gayest thing I have ever written... not that there's anything wrong with that).  My suggestion, however, is awesome.

I figured since I treat my golf umbrella like a sword (when my wife isn't watching because she gets pissed if she catches me), why can't I wear it like one?  I just need a little sling or ring that hangs off of my belt that I slide my umbrella into when I'm not using it.  Like a sword it will hang almost verticle and free up my other hand for other important things like playing Words With Strangers (none of my "friends" can spell well enough to play so I changed the name of the game to more accurately reflect who I'm actually playing with/against).

I know there's a stigma associated with grown men pretending to carry swords.  We've all seen "live action role playing" (LARP) and although we secretly want to join them, we know it's to be frowned upon like eating dolphin tacos.  I really think this functional fashion revolution could help usher us toward a world where our knightly fantasies will be accepted as equally as our need to dress up in furry costumes and simulate sex acts with strangers in similar costumes (don't agree? even congressmen are into it HERE).

I know it will be a little weird at first, but all things functional eventually catch on.  Think about the first guy to wear bifocals.  Sure they made fun of him at first... and then all the way up until the 90s, but now - look at glasses now!  People who don't even need them wear them!  It's like wearing a cast on an unbroken arm!  It just took time and people got so used to the idea that it became a fad.  A couple hundred years from now people will be walking around with umbrella's strapped to their waists making fun of the idiots who stow them in an outer pocket of their briefcase.  I don't know about you, but that's a world I want to live in.

So... who's going to invent this thing so I can start a functional fashion revolution here in the Nation's Capital?  Send your idea to bradkanus@gmail.com and I will promptly steal it and give you no credit.  Make sure you include a complete set of drawings with your submission. 

DC Blogger Impressed with Unimpressive Happenings on Metro

The folks over at FamousDC made yet another DC blogger "famous" today and for once I was enticed into following the provided link.  I'm glad I did.  The person not glad I read it - the blog's author FloridaGirlinDC.  Here's why. 

First of all, her blog name flunks the originality test so badly that it has now been assigned to the digital media shortbus for eternity.  She used the same blog naming equation everybody else out there uses: 

where you're from + gender specific noun + "in" + where you live now = shitty blog title. 

LAguyinNY, MichiganManinMiami, TexasGalinSeattle and million more that we're all very tired of seeing.  We get it - you're really proud of where you're from... you just don't choose to live there.  And you probably don't live there for reasons you're not proud of like high illiteracy and the popularity of "TruckNutz."

I'm sure in her mind she's a pioneer in DC society being one of the few citizens who can bring a Florida perspective to table.  For her sake I hope she isn't going to Taste of the South this weekend where every third person will either be actually from Florida or from Alabama and claiming to be from Florida.  No doubt it - we've got lots of Florida in our DC.

I digress.  But then again, who doesn't?

The premise of the blog post is simple.  She saw an okay looking guy get a business card from a "really pretty" girl on the metro.  She breaks it down into five parts and expresses genuine awe at the guy's work.  Too bad she read way too much into it and failed to realize that in second place behind "f*ck off creep" on the list of "Clues She's Not Interested" resides the business card brushoff.  Let's go to the tape, shall we?

One thing everyone should know now about DC is that it's full of men who can not and will not make a move on a woman.  Go out tonight and watch as tables full of single girls mingle without interruption as loads of dudes watch from afar.  In any other city they'd be swarmed before they even got through the door.  In DC - watched from afar like animals on the African plains. 

I'm ugly.  I've never been good looking.  I didn't have a "heyday" when I was skinny, had high cheekbones and some hint of a chin.  I've looked like Bob Saget my entire life.  This made it hard to get a date for a very long time.  It wasn't until I moved to DC and found out that being the only guy willing to walk up and introduce myself to a woman had its advantages.  I figured out the golden rule of female access - you can't get a "yes" if you don't ask.  And - nobody ever got laid standing across the bar trying to will a girl into bed by staring holes through her. 

However... I don't think that what I describe above is the entire story.  

The guy in this story has two obvious things going for him - he's not hideous and he's got a schtick worked out.  He knows that a decent looking guy who can talk will get laid way more often than a hot guy who waits around for chicks to fall over naked with their legs in the air. 

The little jazz club bit is probably something he pops on girls on that train at that time headed in that direction five days a week.  He's got the odds worked out already - most girls of a certain age, race and socioeconomic class exit the metro at one of the stops near the jazz place he's talking about.  It's a popular area for young people - I think we all know that.  He's got a better than even chance of throwing out one of three stops and being right or one stop off with his guess. Either way, he'll find out if he can start laying down his jazz club schtick after asking only one innocent question.

The girl in the story reacts initially like most of us would on the metro when someone you don't know starts talking to you - disgust.  Talking to strangers on the metro is the same as urinating on the metro - never necessary, always awkward and severely frowned upon. 

His persistence pushes her to interact with him in a limited, guarded fashion. It is not his subject matter and apparent recollection of past events that causes her to engage him as the chick from Florida who now lives in DC would have you believe.  She's now trying to appease the man for fear that ignoring him may just encourage him to get more aggressive.  Let's be honest - all she knows is that this crazy son-of-a-bitch is okay with breaking a cardinal rule of the metro system(talking to strangers), his next move might be to strip naked and do the floppy chicken on her new Nine West wedges.  She's doing whatever her instinct tells her will keep him out of the crazy zone until she can get off the train.

She's forced to banter back and forth with this guy for a bit hoping it stays tame.  You've all seen this happen on a train before and you know how bad you feel for the victim.  You're also thankful that this poor soul is jumping on the grenade for the entire car.  If they don't appease the crazy person, then everyone is screwed.  What this woman did was heroic - at least it was for the people who saw the situation and knew what was going on.  Ms. DC via Florida saw an entirely different movie than the rest of the audience sitting in the same theater, unfortunately. 

The final act of appeasement as she chatted Don Juan off the ledge was the giving of the business card. If you're a guy over 21 in DC and been around bars and women,  you've probably been stiffed with the business card before.  Most of the time you never hear from them again because that's what they intended to happen when they gave you that card and not their cell phone number. 

What do most business cards have on them?  Name, work address, work email, work fax and work phone.   Your most appropriate option here is to email her.  You're not a client and you admit as much in your email the next day - she can ignore you without recourse.  

Are you going to call her office number whiles she's working to ask her out?  Not if you're within driving distance of normal.  

Fax?  Novel idea, but not a good idea.  Too easy to turn into the next viral shaming of an undersexed guy trying too hard.  You don't want Gawker ending your shot with that chick and every other woman in Western civilization. 

Bottom line - nothing says "let's get together soon" like a woman giving you a bunch of bad options for getting a hold of her instead of the best one.  

The cell phone number remains the industry's gold standard for showing interest.  

Lady Florida living in DC didn't see what she thought she saw because she didn't know what she was looking at.  It's as simple as that. 

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Several other notes about her and her blog...

1. She uses the world "chill" and she wasn't referring to what you should do to wine before serving.  She doesn't look 13, but talks as if she is. 

2. Page has a shitfit loading on older browsers (pretty much every office in DC) because of the palm tree background.  You're from Florida - WE GET IT.

3.  She's pretty cute - why the hell is she living vicariously through strangers on the metro? 

4.  That last one wasn't fair.  She was inspired by a random act - good for her.  

5.  She signs off on her "about me" with the most annoying closing ever - "cheers."  How many jackasses do you have to see use that closing before you realize that it's literally the calling card for assholes?  And "ciao" is not a suitable replacement either. 

6.  That's all I have.  Thanks for playing. 

 

War (totally awesome closing)

Brad Kanus

 

Do Your Damn Job Right - Jackass

The photo below shows a frequent occurrence in my office bathroom. 

The mess below the trashcan isn't from lazy people - well, that's not true.  The mess wasn't created by the people who use the restroom.  It was created by the lazy asshole who puts the paper towels in the dispenser backwards every other day.  When installed upside down they don't pull correctly and you end up just ripping the towels into little shreds.  Eventually you just put your hand up the little slot and pull out a stack to put on the counter as a temporary fix.

This picture was taken after they had cleaned up the little shreds of paper twice that day.  Not once did the maintenance staff think to use their key to open the bin and flip the paper towels over.  They just kept coming in and cleaning it up.  Brilliant. 

I really wonder if the guy who screws this up each night knows he's doing it wrong.  I wonder that because some days it's correct and other days it's not - it's random. 

Is there some kind of training the guy can get?  Maybe a short tutorial on how to place paper towels in the dispenser that comes with a certificate of completion that he can put up on the wall in his little janitor closet.

I know it's just paper towels, but it's not something that should be done wrong.  It's too easy not to screw up.