Wednesday, September 21, 2005 :::
Tonight: Backroads at Staccato. As Loretta Lynn would say: wine, women and song. Or in this case, more like beer, gay boys and song.
Update: DJ Kenneth is my new hero. Staccato was packed and lots of fun. Nothing like being in a dive bar full of good-looking guys with great county/southern rock music playing in the background.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 :::
The Corcoran's Andy Warhol exhibit opens this weekend (and runs through February 20). Thanks to DCist for the heads-up.
Sometimes I forget that people who aren't my friends and family read this blog. Like, apparently, the guys in a band called The King of France, who sent an MP3 my way:
The King of France's latest album (out September 27), on which this song appears, answers the question: What would Spoon sound like if Leonard Cohen fronted the band?
They're on tour with Robbers on High Street, another band I like, and will be at Iota on October 2. Damn, am I going to finally break down and go into NoVa for a show?
The last time I DJed at Saint-Ex, I got some positive feedback about a Colored Shadows song called "Life After Love." Here's the video. It's such a great song that I wish there was more to the video.
I’m not sure what possessed me to take the bus on Friday evening, after what I went through the night before trying to get home from Adams Morgan, but I was going to a birthday happy hour and didn’t want to deal with a) driving or b) wearing comfortable shoes to walk to the Metro. And of course the happy hour was taking place a few miles south of my apartment of Connecticut Ave., so theoretically, the bus is just the most logical, convenient, inexpensive, safe and environmentally-friendly way to get there and back.
My experience getting to Cleveland Park, southbound on Connecticut Ave., was almost normal for WMATA: a 45-minute wait during the time when both the L2 and the L4 were supposed to be running every 15 minutes. What was out of the ordinary was that five “out of service” buses passed the bus stop in those 45 minutes before a very crowded in-service bus finally stopped. I got to the happy hour later than I intended, but only slightly inconvenienced.
To get home, I started waiting for the northbound L2 at the corner of Connecticut and Ordway in Cleveland Park just before 10:30 p.m. After an hour, I called the WMATA information number, which has live customer service representatives until 11:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings. I only wish I could have recorded this conversation, but instead I’ll just try to re-tell it as faithfully as I can:
"Could you please tell me why no northbound bus has passed the corner of Connecticut and Ordway in the past hour? Do you know of any problems or delays?"
"No, we have nothing like that listed. I can look into that for you. Hold on please."
Several minutes later:
"I contacted the dispatch, and they can’t get in touch with any of the buses."
"What do you mean? Don’t the drivers have walkie-talkies or phones or something?"
"Yes, they do."
"And… they’re just not responding to calls?"
"Yes."
"So they have some sort of communications devices that they’re supposed to be using, but they’re just not responding."
"Yes."
"So what happens now?"
"Well, the supervisor is going out there."
"Going out there? Like getting in a bus and driving the route and picking people up?"
"He’s going out there to look for the buses."
"What? Like he gets in his car and drives along the bus route to see if he spots the buses?"
"Yes."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes."
"Could you at least tell me how many L2 buses are supposed to be out there right now?"
"No, we don’t have that information."
Wow… Do I even need to say anything else, or does that conversation speak for itself?
I understand that WMATA can’t exactly afford GPS devices in each bus, but to be completely unable to locate a bus because the drivers just don’t want to pick up their walkie-talkies? Aside from the simple fact that there’s no way to find out why the bus is running so far behind schedule, and give customers an estimated time when the next bus will actually get there, what if the buses needed to be re-routed because of an emergency of some sort? That’s too horrible to even think about.
Of course as soon as I gave up on the bus, an hour and 15 minutes into the wait, and started walking down Connecticut towards the ATM to get cab fare, I saw the bus, which of course refused to pick me up because I wasn’t at a proper bus stop. I know some nicer bus drivers break the rules and pick up passengers between bus stops when it’s late and they know there’s not going to be another bus for a long time. This bus driver was not one of the nice ones, and I hadn’t even gotten that far from the bus stop. Seriously, the guy is running about an hour late, not picking up his phone when the supervisor tries to find him, and all of a sudden he decides to follow the rules? I swore a lot, stomped over to the ATM, and got picked up by a Maryland cab that took me home for $5, which RJ later told me is illegal.
Sunday, September 18, 2005 :::
Real time Emmy report: Why is the girl from Veronica Mars singing the theme song from Fame? She really can't sing. Or dance. It's painful to watch. And even more painful to listen to.
I'm not really watching the Emmys, just flipping around, and I happened to land on that moment. I have bad luck like that.
Well, at least Jon Stewart is always funny. Too bad he was on stage for a shorter amount of time than that Veronica Mars girl.
01/05: Taint and Bliss present INFAMY, 9:30 Club
01/10: Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, 9:30 Club
01/19: Benjy Ferree, Meredith Bragg and the Terminals, Greenland, Black Cat 01/24: Hej Hej, Cafe Saint-Ex
