i feel like in the week since we've been living on O street, i haven't really taken advantage yet of being close to bars or restaurants or anything cool. my biggest socializing to date involved inviting lauren and glen over last night and drinking wine on the balcony. also, kriston just made me feel old, and i refuse to have that feeling even though i'm in my mid-twenties. anyway the upshot of this post is to beg someone to do something with me tonight. the scissor sisters are playing at the 9:30 club. i know nothing about them, but i hear they are crazy and disco-y and loud. or there's plenty of happy hours in dupont, etc. and i still haven't seen garden state, if anyone wants to go. please. i beg of you. if i go home, it means i HAVE TO UNPACK STUFF. and if you saw the state of our bedroom, you would understand my reluctance. on the other hand, the living room and kitchen look fantastic, because charles and tommy are domestic divas and took ikea home with them this weekend and set everything up very nicely in my absence.

oh and this is completely unrelated, but i thought i would issue a warning because i love my readers so much: do NOT, under any circumstances, go see vanity fair. it will blow your mind with its awfulness. the best thing about the entire experience was the previews. we saw three, count 'em three, jude law previews. it was like the jude law showcase. and they all look good.

oh wait, i realized that serena williams and jennifer capriati will be slugging it out tonight, so perhaps i will stay home with a bottle of wine and cheer that on.

I guess I'm a terrible person, but I found this article in today's Post pretty amusing. It discusses the phenomenon of sleep-eating, which is pretty much what you'd expect. I know it's wrong to laugh at a syndrome that its victims can't help, and about which they feel shame, but you'd have to be a much better man than me not to find passages like these hilarious:

"Many sleep eaters realize what they have done... after they wake up and find cereal boxes in their beds, frosting in their hair or debris strewn around their kitchen."

or this one:

"[S]he found that she'd started to use her toaster oven and a blender during these episodes."

or my favorite:

"...one of his patients broke the doorframe getting out of her bedroom; her mother had locked the door at her request."

There are some other good tidbits in there, too, including that must-have accessory for any competitive syndrome-of-the-month, the celebrity sufferer: Montel Williams, who had to alter his food purchasing habits in order to avoid eating raw chicken.

But I think the most interesting factoid is that one profiled sufferer solved her problem by putting a rubber snake on her kitchen table. She's scared of snakes, and the sight of the fake one usually sends her right back to bed. It's interesting to wonder what bizarre subset of a person's consciousness is working at that moment -- clearly it's something without much memory, volition or self-awareness, but it is still capable of figuring out that food good, snake bad. It makes you wonder if perhaps the older, stupider parts of these folks' brains are puttering along happily, while their swollen mammalian forebrains, usually responsible for grappling with sophisticated concepts like counting carbs and complaining about the price of gasoline, doze peacefully. It's a little creepy, but also kind of fascinating.

Anyway, I'm sure it's a difficult condition to live with, and I can certainly understand how a loss of self-control would be frightening. But for some reason I find the idea of my ancient caveman ancestor posessing my body, wandering around my kitchen and maybe trying to work the juicer -- well, kind of endearing.

does anyone want to see snow patrol/eisley this friday at the 9:30 club?

also, can i mention how many awesome shows are coming to d.c. in the next couple of months? and now that i live in the city, i can actually go to them!

for example:

930 club has got...

snow patrol
guided by voices
The walkmen
Old 97s
Keane
The killers/ambulance ltd
The faint/tv on the radio
The libertines

black cat has got...

Les savy fav
The thrills
The fiery furnaces
Kings of leon
Q and not u
Rilo kiley
Clinic
Pedro the lion

who's up for what?

even though i would ace this course, i still have to say that it is some of the dumbest crap i've ever seen (and i thought "symphonic masterworks" at uva was a gut):

Grant Huling wrote in to say that he's teaching a class about Radiohead.

We'll learn their history and interpret their music at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, USA. In the class, I'll be exposing the students to nearly every song Radiohead has written, in addition to their music videos, Radiohead TV, MPIE, etc. With homework and class discussions, we'll talk about the themes, literature references, etc that permeate their music, from On a Friday through whatever leaks in the next few months.

Starting today (Sunday September 5th) you can sign up for "Blow Out: The Radiohead Exco" through Oberlin's Experimental College program, through which students and community members teach courses on more unconventional things.

if only i had gone to a college where they offered seminars on radiohead and buffy the vampire slayer.

more radiohead - moby comes up with this brilliant observation:

you know what politics is/are like in the united states?
it's like pop-music and/or dating.
example a: pop-music.
republicans are like ashley simpson, and democrats are like radiohead. radiohead fans will forever be mystified as to why someone would buy an ashley simpson cd, but ashley simpson's handlers/managers understand what the lowest common denominator are looking for and they give it to them. radiohead fans think 'that disposable pop music is terrible, and someday people will see the error of their ways and buy radiohead cd's instead of ashley simpson cd's', meanwhile ashley simpson and her managers are selling millions of records.
example b: dating.
democrats are the bright, conscientious, responsible guy in the corner of the party and republicans are the loud, boastful, arrogant guy in the middle of the room. the bright guy in the corner thinks 'that loud guy in the middle of the room is a jerk and eventually everyone will see him for what he is', but the loud guy goes home with the hot girl and the bright guy in the corner goes home alone.

my point?
yes, radiohead are better than ashley simpson.
and yes, the bright, interesting guy in the corner is better than the loud jerk in the middle of the room. but ashley simpson and the loud jerk in the middle of the room know what people want, and that's why they(and the republicans)are winning.
democrats are nuanced and complicated and republicans are simple and sound-bitey.
people want bright shiny simplicity, not dark obscure complexity.
the democrats put their trust in people's better instincts whereas the republicans put their trust in people's basest instincts.
and that's why the republicans are winning, because they're not governed by ideals, they're governed by results. the republicans want to win no matter what, whereas the democrats want to win because the public will, hopefully, recognize the primacy of their ideas.
and that's why democrats are the step-child party. that's why democrats are the avis to the republicans hertz. that's why democrats are the runners up. because the republicans know how to sell and they know how to win.
of course my hope is that the democrats will learn from the republicans and learn how to win.
but too often it seems that democrats take the 'high road' when the noble and effective thing would be to join the battle in the trenches.
republicans are dirty, and will stop at nothing to win. we saw in 2000 that when democrats take the 'high road' that they lose.
so that's the choice, democrats: take the 'high road' and lose, or learn how to compete in the real world and run the risk of winning...
bill clinton did it, and he won.
al gore didn't do it, and he lost.
i hope that john kerry learns from bill clinton...
-moby'

moby: making the political arena a better place.

i have to write a one-paragraph biograhpy for the DCist staff page. i really do hate these sort of things. you're supposed to sum up your entire being in one witty paragraph, and if you're not clever or funny enough, you are doomed for eternity on the web page. AND i have to find a good picture. blargh!

did everyone have very fun labor day weekends? va beach was good, even though it was cloudy the entire weekend, so we didn't make it out to the beach. i finished the half marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes, which was a little disappointing because i wanted to break 2 hours, but whatever. we went out later that night for becca and julie's birthdays, and an insanely good time was had by all. scandalous pictures will be forthcoming.

update: something i found heartening this weekend, though hardly meaningful or scientific. we did a lot of driving around virginia this weekend, down and up I-95, through some rural areas, and around va beach/norfolk, which is basically the biggest military area in virginia. i couldn't keep count of the number of kerry/edwards bumper stickers that i saw, which surprised me. probably 15-20. but what really surprised me is the number of bush/cheney stickers that i saw on the road. it was a grand total of...two. now, if we're going to equate military support bumper stickers with bush supporters, then bush was winning out, because i saw about 32 million yellow ribbon/i heart my soldier/support our troops bumper stickers. but my family has a US Navy bumper sticker on our car and no political bumper stickers, and we're about as liberal as you get. so, anyway, i am crossing my fingers, based on my bumper sticker observations, that virginia is going to go blue.