I will not share the road with bicyclists until I see at least one per month actually attempt to share the road with me. This means I want to see them stop for stop signs and red lights, and actually signal what they’re about to do. It’s not hard. Oh, and stopping for stop lights means you can’t go–not that it’s a stop sign for the annointed dorks in their unfortunately-form-hugging spandex.

I will not share the road with SUVs just because some dumb bitch (and, natch, nobody else inside) doesn’t know how to fit her earthraper into a normal lane and wants to use mine, too, even though she has plenty of room to her right. Learn to drive it or get a car you can steer and go on the diet necessary to fit your gargantuan ass into it.

Mark’s Duck House took me a bit to find but it saves me from having to schlep to Rockville every time I want good dim sum. Unfortunately it only serves dim sum on the weekend, but it’s worth it. I’ve found that dim sum is best when you avoid the expensive fried dishes and go for the steamed items–they may not show them to you, but ask for the steamed pork buns. There are some non-steamed ones that are on the lower trays of the fried food carts (the buns without the yellow frosting) that are also worth a try–both kinds are sweet and savory at the same time, but with different twists. For desert, I actually prefer the yellow-frosted buns to the egg custard.

Make sure you go for the small shrimp dishes on the steam cart. These are also some of the cheapest items on the menu, so you can get out of there with about $8 per person including tip and be quite full.

The restaurant is at 6184-A Arlington Boulevard at Seven Corners. It’s on Route 50 just northeast of the shopping center where the DC Sniper shot the woman from the FBI. Sad to think of that as a landmark, but it might be more descriptive. It took me a bit to find, but it’s worth it.

As this article suggests, instead of maligning the XBox with motives for killing, try Solitaire, the game that Microsoft puts on every computer that runs its operating system!

Of course, the headlines are about the Olympics, and the XBox killings should have been the Vacation Property killings, but that’s modern journalism for you.

I’d also like to point out that this proves that the rest of the world is every bit as fucked up as my own sweet country, so there.

I can’t count the number of times this scenario has happened to me in a group lunch setting.

Random Person: “Let’s get Pizza! What would everybody like?”

Me: “Just a plain pepperoni is fine.”

Significant Majority of Group Who are Posers, All Together, As If I’d Just Suggested A Dog Feces Plus Small Baby Limbs Pizza: “EWWW!”

Vegetarian Poser: “I know! Let’s get a pizza with Arugula, Capers, Endives, Shiitake Mushrooms, and Tofu!”

Remaining Posers Who Wish to be Seen as Veggie Friendly: “YUM!”

One Meat Eater: “I don’t care if it has mushrooms and onions, as long as there’s one with sausage or something.”

Me: “I really don’t like veggies on my pizza, can we just have one plain cheese or something?”

Head Poser, Sighing Exasperatedly: “Fine. We’ll get the baby his Pepperoni.”

Time Passes and People Get Hungry. The pizzas arrive, with the pepperoni on top. Everyone crowds around, blocking me from getting to them. All demolish the first pizza and proceed to eat. I open the second pizza.

Me: “WTF? This is that Arugula and Crap, and the other is the Veggies Plus Token Meat. What happened to the Pepperoni and the plain cheese?”

Vegetarian Posers: “Oh, really? This is pepperoni? We were just hungry. You can have all the others, though, we’re full. Yum, this is good pizza!”

The moral of this story is: Everybody just likes pepperoni pizzas, no matter how much they make claims to the contrary, and even vegans just eat plain cheese and leave the veggie shit for last. Nobody really likes veggies on their pizza, but everybody thinks they do. Except me.

My friend Todd Gardner, whose site I built and host, has three of his pieces in an art show in Alexandria, kicking off with a reception tomorrow.

It’s at the Del Ray Artisans building in the Del Ray neighborhood, which I know many of my loyal readers live or work near.

2704 Mt. Vernon Avenue
Alexandria, VA

Friday, June 4, 7-10 PM

So stop by before or after you go see the new Harry Potter flick (I’m just going to avoid the kiddie crowds by seeing that flick a bit late).

Richard Biggs died Saturday. I mainly care because he played Dr. Stephen Franklin on Babylon 5, the best TV science fiction show at least since Earth 2 and probably since the first season of Battlestar Galactica. And, from what I’ve read, he was a helluva guy.

As my brother pointed out, it wasn’t obvious why a doctor on Babylon 5 would be such a major character, other than Star Trek did it–even Battlestar Galactica made the the doctor do double duty as the robot specialist, and he was a minor character at that. Still, Biggs took it and made it his, being one of the most consistent actors on the show. He also got to do some stretching in seasons 3 and 4, as well (as did just about everybody).

It was a tough role–for 3 seasons he only got to be the high-minded idealist, which is an instinctively broad and boring character; preachy and smug. He managed to put a little more passion in it without letting it become a charactiture. When his character had a drug addiction, he played it well. When he had to be paired with a freer character, such as Marcus (annoying anglophile ranger) or Garibalidi (cynical ex-alcoholic head of security) he could be extremely good.

Without seeing Babylon 5 in syndication, it’s tough to get into it, but if you have a friend with the DVDs, borrow them but be prepared to overlook some of the first season as they get things going. By season 3 it could be as good as any political/war drama that was ever on TV. I’m glad for this show I was actually there from the beginning.

Tyler Cowen exposes the fact that girls are more likely to recieve creative names than boys. He then wonders:

[I]t remains a mystery why parents take more chances with the names of their baby girls.

He also remembers when his own name was not so common (I swear every little rug monkey in the local beastiary–er, coffeehouse–has that name now):

I can remember a time when the only other “Tyler” in my mental universe was Henry Kissinger’s dog.

Lemme guess–he got teased about it. Or maybe worse. Anyway, there inlies the answer to his quandry: boys with silly names will be beaten mercilessly by their peers. The pressure to conform starts earlier and is more physically enforced than with girls. When women around the office start pondering names, the guys there always start shooting down names for boys. “Nope, that’s a playground beating name for sure.”

Girls are more cooperative at first, and are expected to show some individuality (within carefully restricted rules) of dress later–that is, such things can be an asset if they’re popular enough, and the name is not likely to be the source of initial unpopularity. Boys, on the other hand, are much more likely to pounce on such a difference, often literally. Trust me, as the only male Sandy south of the Mason-Dixon line, I know this. This can affect your popularity and hence your reproductive chances. So naturally, you would expect the type of people to give boys odd names to be selected out, at least in modern suburban American culture.

Obviously this isn’t a 100% thing; otherwise I would not be one of the few non-Alexander Sandys. Probably just enough sacrifice their sons’ popularity that the cycle of names continues on (with the addition of last names of popular figures, I’m guessing). But a testable prediction of my wild speculation would be if boys’ names’ popularity rises and falls as quickly as girls. My guess would be “no.”

Update: I’ve corrected the sex difference to be between girls and boys as opposed to girls and women–though it’s true that women recieve far fewer creative new names than girls, since they just tend to take existing last names, if any.

In the last two nights, a buddy and I got some pent-up moviegoing out of our system, so at Shirlington (which has really gone downhill) we saw Goodbye, Lenin! and then at Bethesda Row (very nice, especially by comparison) we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Now normally, for offenses such as Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber, I have banned Jim Carrey. I will not see movies with him in the starring role. But he has pulled out an acceptable performance in Liar, Liar and Truman Show, so when the reviews are REALLY good I’ll consider it. So Eternal Sunshine was a very pleasant surprise. What amuses me further is that the arts and croissaint set won’t realize…well, Science Fiction? You’re soaking in it!

Just because a piece isn’t all molded plastic and Scandinavian furniture from the 60s doesn’t mean it’s not science fiction. What’s really unusual is that, unlike many films featuring spaceships and robots that you may know, Eternal Sunshine actually is real science fiction. It takes a science fictional device that could theoretically happen–in this case a technique to map and remove memories–and examines the consequences. It’s a classic What If? story.

What if you could erase the memory of a bad relationship, a dead pet you can’t live without, or an unrequited love? Now the science is by no means perfect, and I’m sure a few neurologists guffawed at the scenes in which Carrey is chased through his memory by the doctor he paid to delete the memories, but a few artistic allowances aside, it’s real science fiction. But in the absense of “lasers” you’d never know it.

Goodbye, Lenin!, on the other hand, is an historical piece set in 1989-90 East Berlin. Internally, it has a science fictional element–an alternate history where the Wall doesn’t come down and life goes on as it had. The idea is that a woman whose husband escapes to the West in the 70s becomes a kind of Communist cheerleader–a pinko June Cleaver–but in the late 80s sees her son arrested in one of the first mass protests against the regime, has a heart attack and slips into a coma. Meanwhile, Honnecker resigns, the Wall falls, and reunification talks begin.

When she suddenly wakens, her son tries, with the help of some neighbors, his sister and her boyfriend, and a video-producing friend from work, to keep the knowledge of the changes going on outside from reaching his mother, in hopes of preventing another heart attack from the shock. Hilarity ensues. No, in this case, rich amusement tempered with personal conflicts ensue.

It’s quite a compassionate movie, which is really odd when you consider the entire thing is in German. Plus the nurse is a hottie. However, fair warning, she’s not the one you see naked. That’s why you lose the wars, guys.

So go see both–they should appeal to people who aren’t arthouse fans as well as those who like to be known by the snob appeal of the movies they see.

I’d just like to say that Tyler Cowen knows economics, but does Tyler know classical music? No.

Well, he’s probably pretty well versed in it, but:

1. He links to an article that is attempting badly to be both humerous and controversial
2. He then disagrees with things that no rational actor should, perhaps endangering a few political science and economics models

In my dark past, I acheived a degree in music. There, I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again. I don’t care. Anyway, it gives me license to make these sorts of catty comments that only one of the annointed can make. And link to the article in what would be a blatant act of hypocrisy for you mere mortals who didn’t waste *cough*5 years*cough* in getting a degree.

As to the article itself? I’m feeding the troll, but…

1. Kinda.
2. Think you’re reacting to the name, but…kinda.
3. Mostly, yeah.
4. No, though most people don’t.
5. This is an Undeniable Fact of Life, Holy Writ, Should Be Inscribed in Stone Somewhere. A Really Hard, Chemically Inert Stone.
6. Meh.
7. You’re overlooking the overuse of tremolo. Everything else is secondary.
8. Bullshit.
9. Thanks for proving my point about Stalin apologists, commie.
10. So don’t listen, bitch.

Tyler Cowen cites others who compare the cost of gasoline to other commonly-purchased items. I’d just like to add to the list bottled water, which is the biggest ripoff I’ve ever seen.

If the highest gas prices in the US are $2.12 a gallon, compare that to the bottled water that I regularly find for $1.19 for 20 ounces.

That’s around $7.62 a gallon. I guess that water-powered car isn’t such a great deal if you use bottled water…maybe you should drink the gasoline instead?