“Sorry, I’m not going to be able to work it. I have cancer,” was the response one workaholic contributor to Running Through Rain had to start telling colleagues. They were calling at 5 a.m. with questions while he was on long term disability dealing with his illness.
I promptly shared this with my D.C. stressed colleagues and peers. They responded with unnerving consistency—laughter. Oddly more terrifying was that said laughter was immediately followed by a far away look and hopeful muttering of “maybe it would work?”
This led me to conclude that there is a slight problem.
Or in the famed words of Les Miserables’ Chain Gang~
Look down, look down,
Don’t look ‘em in the eye.
Look down, look down,
You’re here until you die.
What concerns me is that perhaps we want to be “here” until we die. Lovely thought, I know.
Anyway, for the sake of sanity, I am posting a list of well written blogs, references, and other items to help save you from your Monday madness. Enjoy.
Welcome to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. John Deer Tractors, $300,000 steers, cowboy hats, angry bulls, signs such as the one above, and the worlds largest belt buckles, e-v-e-r, were just a few of the sights I took in this past weekend.
Yes, you read right, I spent last weekend hanging out with the cows.
And I’m here to report several of them are worth more than I am. How disturbing.
With roots extending back to the early 1930’s and a history of performers ranging from Gene Autry and Elvis Presley to George Strait and Miley Cyrus, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held for twenty days each March for the past 76 years, claims to be the world’s largest livestock exhibition and rodeo event. With nearly 1.2 million in attendance this year, it may live up to the hype. (Albeit, I’m guessing 1.1 million alone showed up for Miley Cyrus’s performance. See picture to left.)
So I spent Friday’s spring afternoon wandering around Reliant Park to take in the carnival rides, sweet corn, Novice Youth Western Horsemanship rounds, BBQ, a lot of painfully pregnant cows, more food, baby piglets and lambs, still eating, and the entire population of exhausted, Texan 4H members whom had been earning scholarship money and having fun for the past eighteen days. More than one was passed out on a haystack with a hat pulled over his or her eyes. I couldn’t blame them. I got tired just from all that eating.
As much fun as the livestock show was (cough, cough), sitting in second row directly behind the chutes was the undoubtedable highlight of my Texan Rodeo indoctrination. As my tour guide put it, “it’s every East Texan’s girl’s dream to sit behind a row of cowboys.” And did we ever. I have never seen that many pairs of Wranglers leaning on a railing this side of Walmart’s doors . They look much better from the second row seats.
Aside from the scenery, there were the amazing displays of athletic prowess and complete stupidity as exhibited in bare back bronc riding, saddle riding, and bull riding. 8.0 seconds never looked so long. Particularly after one cowboy went over a set of ornery bull’s horns and got up to find the back left leg of his jeans split wide open from the close encounter. Or as the announcer put it, “these are the kind of bulls every Dad dreams his daughter’s boyfriend will ride.” I was inclined to agree with the announcer when Rubber Ducky, a horribly misnamed bull, managed to nearly jump out of his cage and take a few cowboys with him. After no one died, the day of livestock viewing, rodeo appreciating, and food gorging rounded out with a wagon race that would’ve made John Wayne proud, a calf scramble that had 28 students chasing down 14 calves in a Looney Tunes worthy effort, and a Pat Green concert to 56,000 cheering fans. The next day was the close of the rodeo, and you could feel it in the tired, frantic air. Everything was caked in dust but still rawly energetic. I loved it.
As for me, a few hours later, I slumped into the car seat exhausted, deaf and smelly. And happy. I had mud on my boots. It felt good.
And it has made returning on Monday morning to corporately clean America feel…fake. Maybe I’ll catch up with them in Cheyenne.
Hear ye, hear ye, the bar tender(ess) with the mostest has resurfaced. Two months ago, I pulled up a chair at Penn Quarter’s beloved Rasika and promptly experienced one of the most disappointing cocktail hours of my life. Instead of receiving one of Gina Chersevani’s, their well known bartender, copyrighted masterpieces, a pear and vanilla infused Woodford reserve, I got a C-list imitation that consisted of extra melting ice cubes, soda water, and the dregs of bourbon happiness. I promptly took it back up to the bar. The conversation went like this.
“Excuse me,” I ask politely.
“Yes,” begin glaring by very small woman behind bar.
“I don’t mean to be a pest, but this doesn’t taste right.” Extend drink for viewing.
“It should.” Very small woman makes direct statement.
“Ummm, no, it really doesn’t. May I have the pear and vanilla infused bourbon drink.” Unhappy me makes statement back.
“We’ve changed the menu.”
“Oh, I didn’t see that. Well, I see you still have a jar of the drink, so may I have that instead?” See me eye jar of bourbon happiness that is nearly empty.
“That’s what I gave you, it’s just got something different in it.”
“Yes, that’s the problem…”
It went downhill from there. I asked for Gina. I was told “she is no longer with us.” My drinks promptly got worse. I’ve only been back once since then. It wasn’t any better. Later I learned from the Washington Post that there had been “a major shake up of Washington’s Mixology scene,” as put by Fritz in this Behind the Bar article and customers are not pleased.
Then EatBar, which is adjacent to Tallula, happened. I walked in with friends on a whim and found Gina parked behind the bar working her magic.
Hallelujah.
So for those of you looking for our long lost master creator, she’s taken her talents across the Potomac and to the capable hands of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which also owns local favorites Tallula, Evening Star, Vermillion, Rustico, and Buzz. And the Post is claiming the Group is taking over Dakota Cowgirl, at 1337 14th St. NW, and rumor has it Gina may join the new venture. Perhaps then my cab fares can cease to be $50 a pop to visit the master at EatBar.
“Who cares that St. Patrick’s Day falls during the work week, and on a Monday no less? We’re celebrating anyway! So tip your hat to Ireland’s patron saint, ring in the day with beer, festivities, food, and, oh yeah, more beer at some of these area hotspots. And remember to offer the toast, ‘Erin go bragh,’ or ‘Ireland Forever.’” So goes the Washingtonian’slist off for St. Patty’s Day fun.
For more Irish activities and pics, check out the links below:
Despite popular belief, there is more to D.C. than federal buildings, political sightings, and random violence. See it for yourself here, or go to the DCist Exposed Photography Show that is running March 7-15, 2008 at the Civilian Art Projects, which is located at 406 7th St. NW, 3rd Floor, in Washington, D.C.’s Penn Quarter.
May original, spontaneous art made out of the simplistic and the mundane live on forever and ever and always.
Now there’s something you don’t hear everyday. But then Café 8 isn’t your everyday restaurant. It’s you’re any day restaurant.
Thursday night I arrived at its doors destitute and hungry. In other words, lawyered-out. Café 8 posted week day hours until 10 p.m. We walked in at 9:30 p.m. They happily seated us by a roaring fireplace in the warm color infused back room and then proceeded to take my worries away with their cigar borek via the chef’s mixed appetizer plate, a Mediterranean Pide, and life changing Baklava that takes years off your heart and adds light to your world.
Somewhere in the midst of my feast, two of the three restaurant partners introduced themselves, asked what we thought, and shared their hopes for the restaurant. One of which personally took us behind the bar to show us his carefully selected ice maker. “I got the one that made the biggest ice cubes I could find, you know, so the drinks stay cold without becoming watered down.” And that’s the kind of attention to detail that let’s someone whom is culinary clueless know that she’s in the right place. Campaign is in the air, but these guys made it feel like talking to neighbors. Neighbors that include restaurateur Tombel’s financial backing, a former Zatinya sous chef, and Café Diva veteran Hamza Celik. The compilation of their efforts is authentic and innovative without being presumptuous and overpriced.
Culinary pedigree aside, Café 8 has one of I Street’s best kept secrets—Francis the Bar Man. His honey infused Athens martini made going to work exceedingly difficult the next day. Or maybe it was that free shot. The point is, the place was warm, inviting, and fun. And entertaining. Ever seen white guys try to move to Indian music? It was like watching twenty and thirty somethings get a vibe from the Bend It Like Beckham soundtrack.
8th and I Street is becoming the SE Georgetown with its eclectic array of pubs and restaurants in close proximity to the Nat’s new stadium. It’ll have arrived when its moniker isn’t derivative of its north east predecessor, but with places like Café 8 on the roster, it shouldn’t be long before soon.
Now that I’ve shared with you my new hero, I know you’re wondering how he, who shares the same last name as a Nobel Prize winning economist, ended up with the first name “Kinky.” O.K., maybe you’re not, but I was. Click play for the answer to that and all of your other unasked questions.
Took a drive up America’s spine recently. It was one of those, “I can’t be here,” “me either,” kind of trips. So we threw hastily packed bags into the trunk, three dollar gas into the tank, and found ourselves driving.
We were on a road trip. We were off to escape. And we were “escaping” by crawling up the I-95 spine of East Coast America’s brown winter back to the smells of diesel and sights of bareness. We quickly learned that corporate America’s Alcatraz extends a bit beyond a single day’s drive. The only things that broke up the slag road and monochromatic horizon were the orange detour signs that peppered the highway and one billboard in Baltimore that read “Sprint. Coverage like old bay on blue crab.”
Nice to see someone’s creative mind was working. Mine, on the other hand, was not.
The past month it’s been an attack of the T’s—trial, taxes, technology, temperatures, and TB (not really, but it felt like it). If one’s right brain doesn’t atrophy after weeks of corporate excitement, then it must already be gone. Thankfully, we live in a world of experiential defibrillators. Within hours, I was circling Rodin’s Burghers of Calais at Rodin’s Museum, sipping martinis with inventive names at the Continental, tasting flights of Filipino appetizers in a converted 19th century colonial bank called Cebu, walking cobblestone streets that legitimately qualify as old, and buying barrister bookshelves made on the right side of 1850.
But I wasn’t there yet. I was in the car, and this writer’s mind was overflowing with a world of non sequitors-Nietzsche was pushing against the status of Brady’s ankle (and now ego), James Dean was somewhere between Heath Ledger’s death and Van Gogh’s absinthe ingestion, and everything else was sandwiched between the sky of a Federal Rule 26(a)(1) disclosure due Monday and the earth of an impatiently waiting half done manuscript.
This, of course, means my mind tripped over itself straight into Kerouac’s lap.
“Where are we going Dean?”
“I don’t know, but it’s the open road man.”
“But why?”
“We just go to go.”
For the first time, I really got why Dean just had to go. So we’re going.
And upon arrival, we were greeted with a massive billboard declaring, “Coverage like cheese on steak.”
Sarah E. Moffett is a twenty-eight year old attorney working for a Washington D.C. area law firm who calls herself an author moonlighting as a lawyer for 2000 billable hours a year. Her first book, Growing Up Moffett, was released by Faithwalk Publishing in April of 2007.
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