Miscellaneous: July 2009 Archives

• Video above, courtesy FOX 5, of Marion Barry speaking at his press conference today. The gist: he's happy the stalking charges were dropped, thinks he never should have been arrested, and refused to answer any of the many, many questions he got about the propriety of hiring his ex-girlfriend for a job she may have never done. Also: Barry was worried his poor 92-year-old mother might have succumbed to the stress of finding out about this latest arrest. Something tells us if Barry's mother survived all his previous arrests, she probably handled this one just fine.
• The Sexist covers today's arrest of 26 AIDS activists at the Capitol, at least four of whom are part of the local HIV/AIDS community.
• Echoditto labs has resurrected the long lost Meenster iPhone app for Metro train arrivals.

          

Most of the excitement, such as it was, about last night's poorly-attended match between the Washington Kastles and St. Louis Aces vanished when the main attraction, former star Anna Kournikova, was sidelined by a wrist injury. Or, at least, that would be true if the WTT was really about tennis, which it is not. Party tennis is right: the tour is obviously more entertainment than sport, focused on giving away T-shirts and Chipotle gift certificates and other such fun. Fans looking for an authentic tennis experience are advised, as always, to wait until next month's Legg Mason Classic.

            

The Washington Kastles, the local World Team Tennis franchise, played their 2009 home opener last night. Sadly, their 23-16 loss to the 1-2 Philadelphia Freedoms (whose star player Venus Williams was the big draw of the evening), pushed their record back to 0-3 overall. But World Team Tennis is not entirely about what's going on on the court or trivial things like win-loss records. In fact, we'd like to dub World Team Tennis as something more appropriate. Moving forward, we'll call it what it is: Party Tennis.

Some happy news from the part of Washington that is so Catholic it used to be called Little Rome. With the exception of papal visits to Washington, the concerns of the American Federal City and the Eternal City do not overlap all that often, but one long-time Washingtonian is about to assume the reigns of a powerful curial office in Rome. Fr. J. Augustine Di Noia, a Dominican priest and influential theologian, has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as Secretary of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Yesterday, we mentioned in the Morning Roundup that our DCist_Updates Twitter feed is officially one year old this week. We're not exactly gunning for Ashton Kutcher-like numbers here, but we are pleased to note that just today we reached 5,000 followers. Thanks so much to all of you who already follow and retweet us on a regular basis! For those of you who don't yet, know that DCist doesn't blast every post we write onto our Twitter feed. Instead, we try to keep you updated when breaking news hits or when especially interesting or popular posts go up (you don't want to miss Overheard in D.C., do you?). Twitter accounts are free, and you can follow DCist_Updates here.

• Bad news for soccer fans attending tomorrow night's CONCACAF Gold Cup matches at RFK Stadium -- Metro won't be staying open past midnight, even if the game ends later.
• Hot tip: If you're arrested for DUI, don't get arrested for it again just a few hours later.
• Frozen Tropics reports a tricky situation of neighbors being forced to contend with the lingering smell of a dead body that wasn't discovered for some time before it was removed.

A Capitol Hill institution, Trover Books, announced yesterday that it will be shutting its doors. Hill residents of the long-term and less permanent kind have long relied on the shop at 221 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, for political books, congressional directories, non-Washington newspapers, and candy and cigars. Joe and Anne Shuman founded their family store in 1958, passing the business on to their three sons. One of them, Andy Shuman, told DCist today that "business has been bad the last couple years and getting steadily worse," a decline that accelerated "as the economy has fallen apart." During a visit to the shop this morning, employees pointed to the postman who came in to deliver the mail: he also had some Amazon packages under his arm.

In case you didn't believe us when we said yesterday that Alexander Ovechkin was becoming "the guy" in the Washington sports scene, consider this: President Obama had high praise for the Caps star in a speech he delivered at Moscow's New Economic School this morning.

• WTOP reports that D.C. police had been investigating threats against Marion Barry made by the ex-husband of Donna Watts-Brighthaupt prior to his weekend arrest on stalking charges.
• Actor Kal Penn officially started his job at the White House, and Reliable Source reports he's using his real name, Kalpen Modi, on the job. The Borderstan blog previously reported that he'd moved into an apartment in the area between Dupont and Logan Circles. Kal told reporters today that he's taking Metrobus to work. One of us! One of us!
• City Desk breaks down the latest All Hands on Deck numbers.

D.C. is just too real for the Real World.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention this before Artomatic closes: our arts and managing editor Heather Goss took a quick photo of the above wall by Sarah Bever, which prominently features a few select members of the DCist commentariat.

It's the Fourth of July and news stories on the ground are about as light as Union Jack flags. Granted, Sarah Palin left folks with a real humdinger to consider over the beer cooler this weekend, considerably upping the ante in the absurd-Republican-governor-presser sweepstakes. Switching from self congratulation by way of sports analogy to bitter renunciations of her enemies, she sounded downright Nixonesque, as one friend observed.

Bartenders have an interesting job -- it's one of the few jobs where it's basically accepted to be grumpy sometimes (or all the time, at some bars). People have to wait for them, because they want their booze. They're frequently opinionated. Sometimes, they have a point.

>> And I, for one, welcome our new Real World overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted DCist blogger, I can be helpful in rounding up others to be spoken about carelessly in their camera-laden confession caves.

• 75-year-old Geraldine Marshall ain't afraid of no pot-smoking, vandalizing teens. [WUSA9]
• A set of quadruplets - three boys and one girl - were born at Howard University Hospital this morning. [NBC4]
• The Montgomery County council has approved funds for 30 additional speed cameras to be placed around the county, doubling the jurisdiction's current number of cameras to 60. [Silver Spring Penguin]