A liltte dinner conversation

So, Thursday night my girlfriend and I try out Acadiana on NY Ave. Good meal -- FAR better than the Washington Post's review would lead you to believe (the crab dip appetizer was weak, but the duck was out of this world).

One small issue -- the tables are a little close together, perhaps a litle too close for comfort. We realized this about 20 minutes into our meal, when a typically self-important-20-something-Washingtonian group of paralegals takes the table next to us.

Now I'm not the guy who says that Washington breeds douchebags. No way. I know too many cool native Washingtonians and have been friends with too many great people who have lived here for 10+ years to make those kinds of generalizations.

But let's be honest: This town tends to be a magnet for people who think they're too fucking important for New Jersey, for Pennsylvania, for outlying Boston towns (i.e, the whole damn state of Mass), or for whatever place they originally came from. THESE are the people who give Washington a bad name. Washington doesn't TURN them that way, they thought they were special some time around junior year of high school.

And this party of four next to us was EXACTLY who I'm talking about. A selection of quotable quotes from the Carrie Bradshaw wannabes next to us:

- "I NEVER read the news. NEVER. I just can't. I'll read style, I'll read humor, I'll read sports, I'll read the celebrity pages. But NEVER news. I just can't."

- "I buy everything from Ann Taylor or Banana Republic. EVRYTHING. That's where all of my clothes come from."

- Upon consulting her blackberry over dinner: "That little piece of shit! That LITTLE. PIECE. OF SHIT! Who does he think he is, taking my projects? I'm e-mailing the partners right now!"

- "Remember how your mom said I had beautiful skin? I love her!"

And the grand coup:

- "Facials? Manicures? I don't spend that kind of money on myself."

(This line was delivered as the young woman perched her shoeless foot on the sofa across from her...the same sofa my girlfriend was seated on. About 16" inches away from her. As she was eating).

This town attracts some real asses.

Was it something I said?

Ok, so I posted my 9/11 story, which included a pretty freaky account of an even more freaky dream I had a long time ago, and I was a little afraid of what people would think about said dream when they read it. But I figured, whatever, no one is actually reading this blog anyway, right?

Fucking hell....my page views have doubled since that post....what the hell?

It was a sad day

I don't see how telling my 9/11 story will make any difference at all. It isn't any different than most people's, and it's far less dramatic or moving than many, many other people's stories. And as Wonkette put it so properly today: NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR STORY!

And yet I'm going to take a shot at it, because the fact is that nothing has ever really been the same ever since. And I know I use too many words and I know that I tend to be a drama queen about my feelings, but it's true: Nothing has ever been the same. There has been nothing but bad news for the past five years, and it all seems to go back to that day.

Well, that's only half true.....in a lot of ways it goes back to three weeks before 9/11 when I got dumped by a girl I had no business chasing in the first place. But that's a blog for a different time.

My 9/11 story starts in the wee wee hours of the morning of September the 11th, when I awoke from literally the scariest fucking dream I have ever, EVER had.

Now I'm not trying to pull some Nostradamus shit on you, but the fact is, I has a horrible, guesome, terrifying dream a few hours before the world went bad. The kind of dream where you don't exactly feel relief when you wake up......the kind of dream where you have an awful, awful feeling that something isn't right. And I'm not saying that I knew something was wrong in the world, but I did have a literally sick feeling, that something was wrong in my world.

I know how this looks on paper......and I'm not exactly saying anything, other than it was an odd coincidence. And what sucks is, if I actually tell you about the dream, you'll think I'm full blown bonkers.

In the most abstract terms I can muster, the dream was about a violent conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil (Heh, I told ya you'd think I was a nutter). But that's not the scary part.

The scary part is that the forces of almighty good and almighty evil were both being played in this dream by recently dead relatives of mine.


***ALL OF THIS SECTION HERE HAS BEEN DELETED. IT'S TOO WEIRD AND NO ONE BELIEVES IT ANYWAY ***


And then, gradually, the form faded away, until it (whatever it was) was reduced to the tall, gaunt silhouette of my grandfather, backlit against a flight of stairs.

He turned and looked at me again, but said nothing. I couldn't make out his face, but he looked impossibly frail, impossibly weak. He looked helpless. Stepping lightly and unsure, he moved towards the stair and disappeared forever.

I awoke with a start, and felt very, very afraid. And this is the God's honest truth: I was certain I had lost another relative.

Somehow I got back to sleep, and awoke some time in the 7:00 hour. I tried to shake off the bad feelings, but driving into work in Rockville that morning, I decided that I needed to check in on a few family members.

Arriving at my office, I dialed my parents while I booted up the computer and waited an unprecedentedly log time for Yahoo to load. My mom answered the phone.

"Hi, it's me.....how are you?"

"Are you watching the news?", she asked.

"No."

Of course, you know the rest.

There are so many odd images I remember from that day. The impossibly crowded roads when I left work in Rockville, around noon. The empty streets in the District as I ventured back home. The empty patio at the closed Starbucks across the street from my old apartment on Newark Street. The Pentagon, still visibly smoking, as I crossed the Key Bridge to visit a friend in Fairfax that night. And the armored military vehicle stationed on a Georgetown street, artillery pointed towards the bridge, as I came back home. The sounds of low-flying helicopters and jets patrolling the skies above Washington, which would continue on for weeks.

Yes, you know the rest.

We're All Gonna Rock to the Rules I Make!

Ok, yeah, so with the primary election coming up I've really been re-thinking this "despite it all, I really do love DC" thing. But truth be told, the last few years have be a little bewildered. It sure is a big, rich, gay, Carrie-Bradshaw-stepping-stone-to-New-York kinda town lately. And now that I work near Cap Hill, I really do have a better appreciation for why people say that the people and the food sucks here (although i found a decent deli in the basement of Union Station, which was borderline shocking).

Anyway, I can't really be bothered to eleborate on any of these thoughts (although there is a future post in here about the "all of DC is gay and rich and white" because it really is an odd turn of events, and I can't for the life of me determine if it's made the town better, or a whole lot worse. It sure seems pretty damned cultureless these days....)

Anyway, here's another dumb-ass exercise I ripped off someone else's blog. It's like, basically, script the soundtrack to a day in your life.....

Opening credits: Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See - Busta Rhymes

Wake Up Scene: We Built This City - Starship

Car Driving Scene: Moby Dick - Led Zeppelin

High School Flashback: Kiss Me Deadly - Lita Ford

Nostalgia Scene: 99 Luftbaloons - Nena

Bitter/Angry Scene: In My Darkest Hour - Megadeth

Breakup Scene: Do What You Gotta Do - Roberta Flack

Regret Scene: You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory - Johnny Thunders

Night Club Scene: White Lines - Grandmaster Flash & Melle Melle

Fight/Action Scene: Sick of You - Iggy Pop

Lawn Mowing Scene: Bolero - Ravel

Breakdown Scene: Let It Loose - Rolling Stones

Death Scene: The Devil may Care - Brian Jonestown Massacre

Funeral Scene: Sing Me Back Home - Keith Richards

Pot Scene: Alladin Sane - David Bowie

Dream Sequence: Green - The Dandy Warhols

Sex Scene (Classy and Sophisticated): Win - David Bowie
Sex Scene (Dark and Creppy): Haunted - Type O Negative
Sex Scene (Fucking Hilarious): Ten Seconds to Love - Motley Crue
Sex Scene (Gay): Mother - Danzig

Chase Scene: Cottonmouth Kiss - Grand Champeen

Contemplation Scene: I Loves You, Porgy - Miles Davis

Happy Love Scene: My Best Kept Secret - Longwave

Happy Friend Scene: Rhinoscerous - Jamie Block

Closing Credits: Do You Love Me? - Kiss