The passing of a titan

I just caught a headline, "Walter Cronkite, Dead at 92" and had to pause for a moment to remember the man most, if not all, journalists looked up to as a guiding light in their career. Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, was a lion of the profession and worked in print, radio and, most recognizably, at CBS News.

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. 

1916-2009

Newsman

When the man said, "And that's the way it is," we knew it was true. Cronkite was from the old school. He treated reporting as a sacred trust between himself and the public. I think America and the world would be a better place if more newsmen acted this way. Governments and corporations and the man on the street might be a little less apt to take advantage of their fellow citizens if they knew there were more like Cronkite watching.

I once had the chance to hear him speak at the memorial service of another legendary newsman, Charles Kuralt, who died July 4, 1997. But, unfortunately, there was bad weather on Martha's Vineyard and Cronkite wasn't able to make it to his friend's service. And, while I can't regret it because I had no control over the event, I consider this a missed opportunity.

Here are the words he used to close his last broadcast as anchor of the CBS Evening News and, I think, they are just as fitting now as we say a final farewell.

"This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of The CBS Evening News; for me, it's a moment for which I long have planned, but which, nevertheless, comes with some sadness. For almost two decades, after all, we've been meeting like this in the evenings, and I'll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I'm afraid have made too much. This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job, and another, Dan Rather, will follow. And anyway, the person who sits here is but the most conspicuous member of a superb team of journalists; writers, reporters, editors, producers, and none of that will change. 

"Furthermore, I'm not even going away! I'll be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries, and, beginning in June, every week, with our science program, Universe. Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981. I'll be away on assignment, and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night."

You will be missed Walter.

Rattling around in me head

I just remembered, not that I’d ever forget, that while I was at Parris Island the drill instructors called a recruit’s head the “brain housing group.” (This comes from the part of a rifle where the trigger is, the “trigger housing group.) But I digress. That has nothing to do with the things running through the Dew’s old noggin today.

In no particular order:

The military is being urged by the Institute of Medicine to ban smoking. I’d heard about this and even seen an executive summary of the IOM report. Today, the Raleigh News&Observer (or, as we used to call it, The Noise&Disturber) wrote this article today if you’re more interested.

What I’m wondering is this: What alternatives do the fine doctors of the IOM offer? Seriously, I’ve been there, tobacco and nicotine have their uses in a war zone. Most appreciably helping to keep you wired. Being healthy and tobacco-free don’t help you stay awake while you’re sitting on a Ma Deuce at 2:43 a.m. keeping watch for the bad guys. (Notwithstanding the fact you shouldn’t be smoking while on guard duty since it gives you position away. You’d be amazed how far the light of a cigarette ember carries on a dark desert night.)

Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller became known as the “Marlboro Marine” after he was photographed smoking in 2004 in Fallujah, Iraq. Seriously, would you deny this Marine a smoke after urban combat? I wouldn't. - Los Angeles Times Photo by Luis Sinco
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I agree the military should offer quitting assistance…when they Marines, soldiers and sailors get out. Not so much the zoomies, they shouldn’t be smoking anyway since their “combat stress” is considerably less. (Kidding). Also, we’re talking about a group of people who are, generally, in much better shape than your average American. A little bit of smoking between 18 and 25 can be overcome.

Spending money to save money? Seems the president and Congress’s plans to spend more than a TRILLION DOLLARS over the next 10 years on health care reform don’t meet Congressional Budget Office muster.

You know what? Instead of raising my taxes to pay for health care for the 47 million American’s who don’t have it, how about cutting $200 billion a year out of the current and future budgets to cover the country’s cost share? You really can tell me the government isn’t already wasting that kind of coin on worthless shit. Give me a weekend with the budget and the line-item veto and I’ll git ‘er don.

In his wonderful book Parliament of Whores, P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

What Congress really needs to do is learn how to control itself. No more earmarks and a balanced budget amendment would be a fantastic place to start. Check out this article and this list of Oinker Award winners from Citizens Against Government Waste. While I’m a huge fan of biking and bike trails, I’m thinking $9.4 million spent on bike trails could be used to provide good, decent preventive (not “preventative” as I actually heard on pharmacy chain commercial this morning) health care for a couple thousand people.

The concept of “spending money on health care to save money” is ridiculous. Congress and the president need to stop spending money to save money as any average moron knows. Although, as we all know, the morons in Congress are above average in many ways. Instead of coming up with new taxes to fund their new program, how about cutting out the wasteful spending instead and apply those savings to health care?

Or is that too simple a concept?

Occumbo! And, finally, news from Italy has Pope Benedict XVI slipping and falling in the bath and breaking his right wrist. How do you say “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” in Latin?

Two things I’m wondering about this incident: With his right hand and wrist in a cast, will worshippers have to worry about the Pontiff bonking them on the head with his fiberglass club when he gives his blessing? And, two, did the Vicar of Christ maybe, perhaps, even just a little, swear a little as his 82-year-old bones snapped? Or was he a stoic Aryan and took the pain like his Teutonic ancestors?

More TV ads I hate

I was thinking last night while sitting on my balcony reading, summer’s not like it used to be. Used to be we’d spend all night out either playing Kick the Can (as children) or drinking (as college students).

The one thing we didn’t do, really, was watch TV. TV sucked during the summer. Except for the chance to catch up with the episode or two of you favorite show you missed way back in February, who’d want to be watching re-runs when you could be outside playing/drinking.

That’s changed a bit in this new millennia with shows like Eureka, Saving Grace, True Blood and Weeds making their season premiers when the sun is high in the sky. All of these are shows worth watching but, again, are they worth giving up playtime for?

One that that hasn’t changed about TV, whether it’s during the summer or deep in the winter, most of the commercials you see suck. Seriously.

I’m pretty much the guy networks hate. I divver most of my shows and watch them the next day, just so I can fast forward through the horrendous commercials. And there are some really bad ones out there, ones that need to go away. For example:

Anything involving insurance and our evolutionary ancestors. Those fucking Geico-caveman ads are no longer funny. They haven’t been funny since, oh, about five minutes after the first one aired. That one, the one with the spokesman apologizing to the cavemen in the fancy restaurant for saying “Geico, so easy a caveman can do it.”? That one was funny. None of them since have had the slightly element of humor in them.

It’s time for the caveman to fall in a glacier. Maybe, when he reappears in 10,000 years, we’ll have figured out how to yank his Actors Guild card.

Any of the ads showing people shopping for a PC and then getting money to pay for it. (Disclosure: I own a Mac, and love it.) These “You find what you want and we pay for it” ads are so contrived I dive for the remote to change the channel every time I see one. You know? For a grand I could find any number of computers that would suit my needs. The most annoying thing in the ads are the people who seem smug and happy about “not being cool enough for a Mac.” Yes, Macs cost more than PCs. There’s a simple reason for this, they’re better computers. Just about anything a PC can do, a Mac can do better, faster and with fewer chances of the machine crashing.

The fact that PC makers revel in the fact that they sell cheap, crappy computers is enough to make me never want to own one again.

That Enterprise Rent-a-Car commercial with the couple packing for a get-away. In Ghostbusters, Gozer the Gozarian asks Ray if he’s a god. Ray answers truthfully, “No” and the team gets spanked. After they dust themselves off and are girding their loins for another try at Gozer, Peter says, “The next time someone asks if you a god Ray, you say YES!”

I always think of this line when I see this annoying Enterprise commercial. Scene: Man and woman in bedroom packing for a couple’s getaway. Woman comes out carrying a red negligee in one hand and a black one in the other.

“Red or black,” she asks with a seductive smile.

“Both,” answers her lover with a look of anticipation on his face more extreme than the one I wore that special, special night with a girl named Debbie. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge say no more, eh?)

Here’s the point, “The next time your girl asks you if she should bring a red or a black negligee with her on a romantic weekend, you say NEITHER!” This way there’s fewer things to get in the way of the sex.

This ad wins the prize because it has two really annoying parts. The second is that, yes, Enterprise will pick you up, but why the hell do they have to deliver a giant SUV to the front of your house with a driveway and a two-car garage? Are you really living in the ‘burbs without at least one car in the garage? How hard would it have been to film this scene outside a condo building?

To sum up: cavemen need to quickly become extinct again; when PC makers try to be cute like Apple they will always fail; and your wardrobe for a sexy weekend away should consist of a toothbrush.

Some of this, a dash of that…

This weekend just past was one of those weekends that can only be described as…pleasant. I saw a great movie Friday night, went for one of my favorite bike rides on Saturday and spent Sunday wandering around the recently reopened Eastern Market. The only downside was dinner on Saturday (after the bike ride), but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The movie
It’s a small film, playing in only two theaters I could find in D.C., but The Hurt Locker is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while (read the Chicago Tribune's review). It takes place in Baghdad in 2004 and focuses on the lives of the men assigned to disarm the improvised explosive devices scattered about the besieged city like leaves in the fall. [Note: I just checked and it’s actually playing in five D.C.-area theaters, so git while the gittin's good.]

Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later, The Unusuals) is Staff Sgt. William James, a soldier who seems to live his life as if he’s already dead. I don’t mean that he is morose or looking for death. He just accepts the fact he’s in a dangerous profession and if he thinks too hard about it, he’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning.

One of my favorite parts comes after James inspects a suspected car bomb and discovers it packed with explosives. Instead of running, like any sane person, he starts taking off his protective suit. When asked why he's doing it, he says, “There’s enough boom in this to kill us all, I might as well die comfortable.”

Some of the scenes, like that of a man locked in a suicide vest or the discovery of a booby trapped body, may seem over the top. But, according to friends who served in Iraq, they are some of the more mild tactics used by the insurgents.

All in all, The Hurt Locker is a great movie that never tells you how to think about the fighting in Iraq, it only makes you think. The Hurt Locker gets two thumbs and two big toes up from the Foggy Dew.

The Ride
Saturday morning/afternoon I went out for one of my favoritest bike rides in the area: The Crescent and the Park. It has other names, (the Zoo Review according to BikeWashington.org, but I like to call the little 20-or-so-miler in the map below The Crescent and the Park. Not very creative, I know, but it’s better than the Zoo review.


The ride took me from G-town up the C&O Canal towpath to the Capital Crescent Trail up to Bethesda. The Crescent is one of the many rails-to-trails trails in the area and I totally recommend it. It’s totally paved (although the part of the towpath I rode is crushed stone), only goes slightly uphill, is pretty shady and has some great scenery. The only annoying part is actually riding through Bethesda to get to the Georgetown Branch extension, which takes you to Rock Creek Park.

For those of you worrying about pulling yourself up the hill from Georgetown to Bethesda, don’t worry, you get all of that back once you reach RCP. The best part? Beech Avenue is closed to (most) traffic on the weekends, so you can go as fast or slow as you like along this part.

The only down side is the bike path in RCP is really in need of an overhaul. Those with skinny-tire bikes may not enjoy it as much as those of us who are used to a few bumps and potholes.

The dinner
After my ride I was, to put it plainly, hungry enough to eat…well, anything. I was particularly craving meat. But seeing as how I was a bit tired after my ride I decided I didn’t want to drive to my favorite barbeque joint and so I decided to try another place.

The new place I tried was the Rocklands Barbeque & Grilling Co. in Arlington.

Fail.

Now I’ve never thought I was a snob when it comes to food. Ask any of my friends, I’ll eat just about anything you put in front of me. But I think when it comes to meat, fire and smoke, I’ll make an exception.

I’ve been lucky enough to live in two very different barbeque havens: Eastern North Carolina and Texas. If you don’t already know, the Carolinas are all about the pork, and Texas is, well, in if it sits still long enough in Texas they’ll throw it in the smoker. But Tejas is famous for, and rightly so, it’s brisket.

I went to a party earlier this year catered by Rocklands and enjoyed their work. I’m thinking now that might have been an anomaly. Perhaps caused by the fact the meat was all cooked onsite. Not that it wasn’t cooked onsite at their location in Arlington, but it was mass-produced there, and that’s the problem.

First off, the brisket was charred a little too much for my taste, which means most people would think it was burnt through-and-through. And second, and this is the worse sin, there was a lot of, how to I put this gently, a lot of “connective tissue” in the pork. And by “connective tissue” I mean cartilage. The part of the animal you can’t really eat because it’s pretty disgusting to chew. I shudder just thinking about it.

The coleslaw was OK, the addition of little carrot cubes and peas was interesting, but coleslaw is merely a side show when it comes to meat. Don’t get me started on the beans.

All I can say is if you find yourself with a hankerin’ for some barbeque, avoid this place.

Eastern Market
What can I say? D.C. got its money’s worth with the rehabilitation of Eastern Market. As my friend and I decided, the fire was probably the best thing that could have happened to the historic market. If for no other reason than the fire probably made the place a lot cleaner.

The crowd you’d expect on a sunny Sunday afternoon was there, pawing over the produce and the overpriced trinkets splayed about. If you’re looking for something to do next weekend (or the one after that), head on over and explore this reborn D.C. treasure.

[Note: I took a bunch of pictures and will be adding them here one of these days. So keep an eye out.]

Oooooo! Ahhhhh!

Seeing as how it's Friday (even if the date above does say Thursday, this is a Friday Picture Post), and I guess it's time for some more pictures. As it's easy to see, these were all shot last Saturday night from the balcony of my good friend the Disaffected Scanner Jockey.

It was the first time I'd taken my new camera out for a spin at night and, well, I'm pretty darn happy with the results. The fireworks on the National Mall lasted about 13 minutes by my watch and, during that time, I shot about 200 or so pictures. For those interested in the technical details: they were shot from a tripod, using a remote shutter release, with an f8 aperture, shutter speeds ranging from 1.6 seconds to 2.5 seconds and an ISO (film speed equivalent) of 100.

Now, in no particular order, onto the pictures!

Got a little of the Washington Monument in this one

A close-up

An extreme close-up

I really like the feathery effects from this one

Next year, I'm planning on being on the Mall, even if I have to camp out there. I want the shot of the fireworks exploding right behind the Washington Monument. Just 359 days to go...

Have to say it...

I gotta ask everyone this question: What the fuck is up with the whole world going nuts over Michael Jackson dying and getting planted?

Yes, he was a decent singer, but he was a singer who hadn't put out a song worth buying in more than a decade. He did nothing to change the world for the better and, basically, he was just a consumer of oxygen the rest of us could use. And he was a total nut job.

I do not understand some people's mania and worship of "stars." I can't think of a single person in movies, TV or music who's memorial service I'd go to. (Disclaimer: I once went to the memorial service for Charles Kuralt, but that was because he was a Carolina guy and it got me out of an afternoon's work painting dorms during the summer of '95.)

Also, aside from my blood relations and a small circle of friends, there isn't a single living being I'd shed one tear for if they died. I may be momentarily taken aback by the death of someone famous, or even not so famous if it's sufficiently gruesome. But, to tell you the absolute truth, if I don't know you I'm not going to lose a second's sleep over your shuffling off this mortal coil.

Hmm, maybe it's just me?

Robbed!!

You ever just feel violated? I do today.

When I came home late from a lovely Fourth of July party early Sunday morning I had not a care in my little mind except for how quickly I could get to sleep. That feeling of goodwill toward my fellow man came crashing down with a resounding “THUD” as I approached the door to my humble abode. (It could have been a “THWACK” or a “THUMP,” I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the moment due to the shock, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a “KERCHUNK.”)

For the past three or so years, ever since I forgot to take it down after Christmas and decided “What the Hell, I’ll leave it up,” a wreath, very similar to the one below, has hung on my door.

No more, though. Some black-hearted scoundrel working alone or, more likely, a team of miscreants, absconded with my Christmas Ball wreath and sucked a little of the joy out of my life. My door, once colorful, exciting and welcoming, now stands stripped of its character. It’s now just another door. One amongst many, it’s only defining characteristic is its lack of a knocker and a number (said items having been ripped off at some point before I hung the wreath).

I don’t know who perpetrated this heinous villainy, but I’m pretty sure I could describe them if I saw them. Yes, I’m looking at you Mr. Drunken 22-to-27-year-old khaki-wearing former frat boy hoping to impress your girlfriend with your “score.” I’m also pretty sure whoever did it lives in my building or is a friend of someone who lives there, mainly ‘cause it’s not winter and they wouldn’t have a coat to hide it under as they made their getaway.

Seriously, I wish I could do a Mel Gibson in Ransom: Go on TV and put a bounty on the heads of the jackasses who took my wreath.

Today I, and my neighbors whose lives were also brightened by the Christmas Ball wreath, mourn my loss, especially because I know we’ll never see my wreath again. As I understand it, the local gendarmes working the wreath-crime unit currently have an eight-month backlog of cases. With every passing minute, the hopes of escape and recovery grow dimmer.

The worst part is now I have to go out and find an even uglier door decoration.