Just saw an ad for the new cartoon on Adult Swim. Doesn't look very funny. And I've got to be honest: I don't really care for the comic. It occasionally hits its mark, but no more often than, say, Mother Goose & Grimm (seriously). Plenty of comedians have proven that racial politics are fertile ground for comedy, but the Boondocks' writing is frequently flat, and half the time it seems phoned-in.

Overall: better than Blondie, worse than Foxtrot. If you think I'm an idiot and have a particular strip in mind, I'd love to be proven wrong. But right now it seems as unfunny to me as any other middling newspaper comic.

Also, Aaron McGruder went to the hated University of Maryland. QED.

Cripes but there's a lot of white people around here all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, I'm decidedly one of them. But my trip this evening to the Shaw Giant was a strange experience. It's not unusual for me to be the only white face in the store on such trips, but tonight the place was crawling with my caucasian yuppie peers. Including, in a particularly preposterous touch, a group of three apparent hill staffers — one of them wearing a "ROOTS" sweatshirt — discussing how great Barack Obama is. The girl behind me in line was checking her Blackberry. But the kicker was when the line moved efficiently and a separate clerk bagged my groceries. Giant must be pouring some money into this previously forsaken store. I expect an olive bar to arrive any day now.

I don't mean to claim innocence here. I'm just as guilty as the next guy of contributing to this process. In a small way, some of the neighborhood's residents will be gradually priced out because of my personal preference for living near the cool bars (they should take heart: I'll eventually fail to find affordable property, and be forced to move to Manassas). It's inevitable, and although I don't feel guilty, I do feel bad. And so should you, fellow Shaw Giant gentrifiers. Try to keep your head down a little more. It's not our neighborhood, and it's impolite to point out that it's going to be.

every man's dream, right? almost can't believe the police arrested them instead of setting up camp.

What an unusually beautiful weekend. Also, an unusually football-oriented one. For some reason Kriston decided we should get out and enjoy nature on Saturday, and worse, to do so by engaging in an embarrassing athletic display. "Football!" he said. "It'll be great!"

Photographic evidence was deliberately not collected. And just in case, we all shot dirty looks at the teenage girl who was photographing the nearby foliage. But despite there being a number of witnesses, we did play some football. Kriston, Yglesias, Charles, Jeff Dubner, Ezra and the tragically URL-less Jeremy all came to Meridian Hill Park expecting to toss the pigskin. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that none of us owned a football. Charles and I had brought a couple of frisbees, so we played a bit of Ultimate while we waited for the football-owning Katy to arrive and save us from our masculine failings.

The Ultimate was not a pretty sight to behold (it's going to be back to two-a-days for a while, guys). Also, Charles' skills have not atrophied as much as I had hoped based on the substantial quantities of cigarettes and booze that he's consumed since we last played each other. Much to my surprise we all seemed to do a lot better with the football.

I'd played football all of twice before, and only one of those times occurred even remotely close to the burly side of puberty. Yet for some reason I was chosen as one of the two quarterbacks. I like to think it's my "intangibles", or perhaps my "court awareness". Either way, the juggernaut comprised of Jeremy, Katy, Jeff and myself proved to be unstoppable, and good triumphed over evil. We mostly owe our glorious victory to Dubner's tenacious defense, although everyone had nice plays at one time or another. The precise clockwork of our mid-atlantic coast offense ("run that way!") also played a part.

Really, I have only two important things to report. First, Ezra Klein can do that back-flip-to-standing thingy. You know, where you're lying down, and kick your legs, and then BANG!, you're back up. That seems pretty good for a member of the punditocracy, right? Do you think Krugman can do that shit? I'll tell you right now, he can't. And if you've got the choice between two authors writing intelligently about national healthcare, BUT one of them may also be able to do a spin-kick, which one are you going to read? It's obvious. Ezra brings the value-add.

Second, I am a million years old. We played touch football for what, 45 minutes? My limbs were already stiffening up by the end. The next day my legs ached, my abs ached, and I was pretty sure I had turf toe, despite not actually knowing what that is. Apparently the elliptical trainer and the ruthless physicality of the software development game isn't keeping me in as tip-top shape as I had thought. Still, it was a lot of fun at the time.

Sunday was appropriately sedentary. Apparently one of the folks in Charles' church has started giving away his Redskins season tickets as a form of protest against Daniel Snyder, and this week I was the beneficiary of the spare. Rock.

I'd never been to an NFL game before. It was pretty great. The spectacle; the Skins' victory; the Eagles' loss — each sweeter than the last. Wow. Even the Philadelphia fans were great. Sure, they were detestable, just as Charles had promised, but they were detestable in exactly the right way. The ones near us were polite enough to be foreborn, the ones away from us were obnoxious enough to get kicked out, and all of them were pathetic enough to prompt truly outrageous post-game gloating from Skins fans on the Metro.

All in all, the footballiest weekend in a while. Oh yeah: feeling obligated by a Microcenter splurge on SD memory earlier that day, I took a ton of mostly uninteresting pictures. They're here, if you're interested.

nobody ever pooed in the foyer to my apartment in washington, that's for sure. (unless tommy and charles are hiding deep, dark secrets.)

gross.

UPDATE: according to a neighbor who actually saw the offending poo (i only smelled its remnants, or, er, whatever, when i came home from class around 1 pm) it looked like a "mass" that had been "scraped off of something." i am about to die of disgustedness and terrifiedness. who. does. this?!?!?

UPDATEII: best blog post ever, perhaps?