Movie Review: Death at a Funeral

British people are odd, in that their humour is either mind-bogglingly dry or ridiculously over-the-top silly. "Death at a Funeral" goes for both. It's VERY British.

The plot is simple enough -- a family gathers to say good by to a dead patriarch, and things go horribly, horribly wrong. Dad was hiding a secret, some of the mourners accidentally take acid, there are crochety people, etc. Some of the elements are almost formulaic, others are shockingly fresh.

The end result is a bit flat -- the passive aggressive dryness isn't THAT dry, and the slapsticky stuff is very good but not consistent throughout.

But it gets going pretty well after a slow start, and while it won't win any awards, I did laugh out loud a three or four times, which is three times more than when watching "Superbad."

Mildly recommended, on the slim chance it's playing anywhere near you.

And oh yeah, Yoda/Fozzie Bear/Miss Piggy is the director.

Labor! Labor! Labor!

Happy Labor Day. Everyone mine some salt in honor of ... uh, labor, I guess.

OCTOBER 27!

Just a reminder ... I'm going to be working my magic on October 27 in the DC Improv Lounge. That's a full hour of Chris White goodness, with some surprises. Mark it on your calendar, yo.

Vote for Me!

If you read this blog on a regular basis and you don't have an active dislike for me (I know this only leaves 13 people) I need your help!

I recently participated in a "regional semifinal" for HBO's "Lucky 21" comedy contest -- myself and 11 other comedians performed at the DC Improv on September 4, with everyone doing 5 minutes of jokes.

Starting on September 10 -- this coming Monday -- the videos of these performances will be available online at Ziddio.com, and people can vote for their favorite video (first you have to register for the Web site, but this only takes a second or two). The top three vote-getters get a slot at HBO's Las Vegas comedy festival this November.

Of course, no one in their right mind is going to watch 12 clips and then vote for their favorite. Basically, it's all going to come down to which comedians get the most friends/family/fans to log on to that Web site and specifically vote for them.

But those are the rules I have to play by! I generally hate asking people to do this sort of thing, but this opportunity is interesting enough that I figured it would be worth the attempt. If you have the chance, and you don't mind registering at Ziddio.com, I'd be ever so grateful if you'd log on and vote for me next week. And if you can spread the word to family/co-workers/people with a functioning brain stem and a computer who don't mind voting, that would be tremendously appreciated as well.

To sum up ... 1) Go to www.ziddio.com; 2) Register (the link to do so is at the upper right); 3) Click on the "Contests" tab at the top, and then "The Lucky 21" ...; 4) When you click onto the DC Region voting, my clip will be listed under the name "unclejam76."; 5) VOTE!

Thanks so much. If I make it through to Vegas, I'll divide all my casino winnings equally among those who voted for me.

Finding America on a Map

Strange but true: After years of looking at road maps, with their bright lines and different hues for every state, I cannot help but feel mild disappointment when I cross a state line and the new state does not have an entirely different color scheme. It's like I'm hoping the trees will switch from green to blue at the border. And you know what? It should be that way. Otherwise North Carolina and South Carolina might as well merge. Somebody look into this.

Stranger: I've traveled pretty extensively in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. They aren't all that different. Blindfold me, drop me on a mountaintop in one of those states and I probably couldn't tell you which state I was in. Or why you abducted me. What's your problem, anyway? But when I know I'm in Pennsylvania or Virginia, I actually feel better. Just driving over the state line actually picks up my mood. Maryland, on the other hand, feels weird. It always has, ever since I was a kid. I think I may be a mutant with the special ability to detect Commonwealths. I choose to use this power for good -- for now.

Stranger still: I'm currently in Atlanta, where every street has the same name. Say there's a street named Roswell Avenue. In a 5-mile stretch, you'll find that Roswell Avenue intersects with Roswell Street, Roswell Court, Roswell Boulevard, Roswell Parkway, Roswell Lane, Roswell Drive and Roswell Terrace. Not only that, at least three of those streets will wrap around in curves that intersect Roswell Avenue TWICE, and the 35 shopping centers and housing developments on that stretch all will have "Roswell" as part of their name, plus every side street of the developments will be called something like Old Roswell Avenue Lane, Finally, when Roswell Avenue dead-ends, you will have the choice of going right on Roswell-Peachtree Road or left on Roswell-Dunwoody Boulevard, even though they are the same perfectly straight street. It's like someone got a great deal on pre-named street signs and the city planners just went with it, or they're hoping to confuse General Sherman if he ever comes back. I'm not imagining this. The horrible traffic in Atlanta is caused mostly by people getting lost in their own neighborhoods. ("Honey, it's me. I'm in the car. I just took the left onto Kirkwood Terrace Drive into Kirkwood-Dunwoody Estates, but do we live on Kirkwood Court Terrace Road or Kirkwood Place Lane? What's that? We live on the Kirkwood Place Lane that's 10 miles to the south in another suburb with the exact same street names? Well then you better hold dinner.")

Sad: When you drive into Georgia, the signs say "Home of the 1996 Olympic Games." Now, they DO update the signs -- the governor's name has definitely been changed since 1996. But the Olympics message lives on 11 years later. This is the state-level equivalent of a sad phenomenon I most recently witnessed in Upper Peninsula Michigan. Up there, you'd drive into a town with 10 buildings, and the sign would read: "Parksburg: Home of the 1977 Michigan Class 3-IAA State Champion Women's Track and Field Team, Hammer Sports Division." Sure, we all remember the magical spring of 1977, when hammers cut through the balmy afterschool air like so many sparrows, and hairy-lipped girls became hairy-lipped young women. But nothing better has happened in THIRTY YEARS? You're walking this line, Georgia. Shape up.

Sadder: "Welcome to Delaware, the home of tax-free shopping."

What a Neat Job

There are no street lights in Clemson, South Carolina. The main drag has some ambient light from the Waffle House, but that's it. If there's a sign indicating a street name, after sundown you're screwed if you want to read it. I found this out on Wednesday trying to get from my hotel (on the main drag) to a show at the nearby marina. The marina is about 5 miles away, and also in the 18th century, for as I mentioned there is no electric light anywhere near it.

I got lost, turned around and went back to hotel, where they gave me a handy star chart to steer with. After 15 more minutes of driving through inky blackness, I turned into the marina entrance. More specifically, I drove past the unlit marina entrance, slammed on the brakes, put my car in reverse, and THEN turned into the marina.

I was truly upset to be running late. My itinerary said showtime was 9; I got there at 8:45. As it turns out, I was 45 minutes early; showtime was ACTUALLY 9:30. The headliner wasn't there yet. 45 minutes later, he still wasn't there, nor had anyone else checked into the hotel. The crowd was small (15-20 people), but they were expecting a show. At this point they started testing the sound system. Apparently the old system got fried the week before. The temporary replacement gave off horrible feedback about twice a minute, plus it had the miraculous effect of making someone 10 feet away on a stage sound like they were actually standing 150 feet away in a cavern filled with styrofoam packing peanuts.

And there was still no word from the headliner (he had made an honest mistake, misreading his schedule and thinking the show was Thursday).

So a little before 10, I got on stage with no microphone, no headliner and a crowd of 15 people ranging from college kids to a biker dad and his teenage sons to three really drunk guys at the bar who all promised me before the show that they were going to yell stuff out. Plus I was starting to drag from driving 8 hours earlier in the day just to get to Clemson, and a little bit anxious from thinking I was running late. The deck was stacked for an AWFUL night.

The show lasted an hour. No one heckled, no one walked out, no one asked me to speak up. People laughed through the whole thing; they bought me drinks and said thank you after the show. It wasn't some personal triumph or amazing performance by me -- it was just a bunch of people sitting by a dark lake wanting to have a good time.

This is why comedy is neat. There are shows where everything should be great -- you're in the right kind of town, in an established comedy club packed to the rafters with what you think is your demographic. But then the crowd is flat, the bottom falls out and you have no idea what happened. Then there are shows that make you cringe on paper -- a small crowd, no sound system, no headliner, tucked away in a bar on a lake that you couldn't even find. And everything seems to turn out great.

As always, I can't say it hasn't been interesting.

Mister Christian

Last time I was in Atlanta at the Funny Farm, one of the audiences included a group of married men in their 50s who were out on their monthly cross-dressing night. They were all wearing Sunday dresses and wigs. It was awesome.

We might have topped it this time. Friday night, after my part of the show was over and I was stretching my legs in the lobby, a very fat man hobbles out of the showroom wearing an Atlanta Braves T-shirt, shorts and some kind of medical boot on his left leg. He looked a little vacant, in a mental impairment kind of of way. Spotting me, he walked over and thanked me for performing, then complained that the headliner was filthy (apparently he was Ok with me doing a joke about labial piercings). He started to tell me how he had been a Christian for 29 years and how there needed to be more Christian comics, and then said he was planning on taking a comedy class in order to be a Christian comic himself.

He came out two more times during the show to complain about the headliner, and on the third time he walked off somewhere. Later on, I was standing nearby when his server (a good-looking woman) was looking at his bill. He had walked out on his check. Pretty Christian, huh?

Here's the best part. On the back of the bill he DID NOT PAY, he jotted a note to the server: "I would love to take you out sometime." And then his phone number.

If you're looking for the good times, I found them. They're in Atlanta.

The Home of the Braves

Though my team usually has a way of stumbling over the finish line, CHRIS WHITE FINISHES THE BASEBALL SEASON STRONG!

755 Hank Aaron Drive was the latest stop on the American Pastime Summer Extravaganza Tour 2007, as I watched my (adopted) hometown Washington Nationals paste the (evil, godless) Atlanta Braves at Turner Field by a score of 7-4 on Sunday afternoon. The big stick belonged to Ryan Church, who absolutely cranked a ball over the wall in dead center field for a 3-run home run to put the Nationals ahead for good in the 6th. I would say that Church silenced the crowd, but Atlanta sports fans are a complete joke and were never really loud to begin with. They must have been bored into silence by those 14 straight division titles. Ingrates.

It was my first visit to Turner Field, so I say the trip merits the Jacob's Field treatment.

Location: D. This sounds bad, but it's probably as good of a grade as you can possibly have in Atlanta. It's walking distance from ... uh, neighborhoods that you wouldn't want to walk to. It's conveniently right off the highway ... in one of the worst (soon to be THE worst -- you can do it, ATL!) driving cities in America. So you're going to eat $12 parking fees if you don't take public transit. I didn't really notice anything else to do in the vicinity. Maybe there's a secret crunk club under one of the parking lots? The actually campus for the park is nice though ... there's a nice plaza around the entrance, etc. You're close enough to downtown to get an OK view of the skyline in the outfield, but there's nothing that great about the skyline.

Fun fact: Turner Field was originally Olympic Stadium. After the Paralympics were done, they tore down chunks of the building to make the existing baseball stadium. If you ever doubted that the IOC is one of the most crooked organizations in the world, hang out in Atlanta for a while and try to figure out how the city landed the 1996 games. If your answer doesn't involve a group of greasy European bureaucrats having a one-week orgy with Gold Club strippers on a pile of bribe money and fresh peaches, the I will be shocked.

Food: C. There was nothing interesting or regional. There's a BBQ restaurant, but to qualify as "stadium food," the item in question must be capable of landing, when thrown from wherever you are eating it, either on the field or within 100 feet of the field. I wasn't expecting a grits stand, but there wasn't even a signature hot dog. Considering there's a famous hot dog place called the Varsity about a mile from the stadium, that is sad. Even if you don't want to hook up with the Varsity, how about covering a hot dog with peach salsa? These are free ideas, world. Take them.

Also: The "souvenir" soda cup does not have a Braves logo, a Braves schedule, or anything Braves related anywhere on the cup. It says "Coca-Cola." Yes, Coke is from Atlanta, but I want the satisfaction of watching Andruw Jones' head slowly fading to oblivion in my dishwasher over the course of three years.

History: B. Kudos to the Braves for including a nice little team Hall of Fame ($2 admission) that includes valuable info on the team's time in Boston and Milwaukee, including the fabulous factoid that Milwaukee Braves attendance plummeted the year their stadium's BYOB policy ended. Did you know that, despite their two moves and several name changes, the Braves are the oldest continually operating franchise in baseball? I didn't. There's also the ball from Hank Aaron's 715th home run, and an old Pullman train car decked out to show how the teams would have traveled in the old days. Go figure. Outside the stadium, they have some decent statues (Warren Spahn, Aaron, Ty "Georgia Peach" Cobb, Phil Neikro), and inside the concourse, they have official team photos arranged chronologically as you walk around the building. This is a very nice touch, and it will also let you know that the Braves employed a midget as their traveling secretary during part of the 70s. You learn something new every day. Cincinnati's Hall of Fame is better, and Detroit's statues are better, but the Braves have a respectable package going here.

Seating: B. Me gusta that they have the nice sightlines of the standard "new stadium" seating arrangement. No me gusta that you can't see the field from the concourse behind home plate -- structurally, there are concession stands and bathrooms there. Also, they have some pavilions and whatnot in the outfield that kind of force you to stand a little bit back from the action and give you an obstructed view if you're walking around the park.

Scoreboard: B. The tremendously huge scoreboard is in dead center field, and it is modern and soulless aside from one team logo on top. BUT ... it functions as one AWESOMELY HUGE TV. Amazing clarity, great graphics ... the most technologically impressive scoreboard I've seen. If you had it in your living room, you would definitely be the guy that everyone pestered to buy NFL Sunday Ticket.

Fans: D. Atlanta fans, for every sport, stink. Most are fair-weather fans, and even then they aren't GOOD fair-weather fans. The Braves weren't selling out playoff games at the end of their streak of 14 STRAIGHT DIVISION TITLES. I blame the Tomahawk Chop. No one at the stadium cheered without it. They waited for that music before doing anything. No "Let's Go Braves," no "Nationals Suck," no nickname to hoot for any of the players (some of whom have been with the Braves for a decade), no nothing. Everyone is conditioned to wait for the damn music. And they only play the chop after something good is happening -- never when they WANT something good to happen. Sad.

Odd note: No real mascot to speak of. There was a standard baseball-headed guy named "Homer" who plays a giant war drum in center field, but he wasn't working the crowd. However, I admire that they haven't gone for the "furry pile of crap with legs" to please the kids.

Overall: It's a nice facility, if a little bland. The concourse has a "multipurpose stadium" feel left over from the Olympics, which is unfortunate given all the cool things they're doing with all the other newish baseball-only parks. But I liked all the Hank Aaron tributes, and when you factor in that I hate the Braves with the fury of a thousand suns, I have to round up a little. B minus -- comparable to Jacobs Field (better history but not as aesthetically pleasing, and similar game presentation).

A River Runs Through It

Driving from the hotel to the comedy club here in Atlanta, you must drive over a body of water named "Foe Killer Creek." Apparently it's named after an Indian chief named Foe Killer.

This is the greatest name. Ever. Please, let's make it the new "Jacob."

Reminder: Vote for Me!

Voting opens today for the HBO "Lucky 21" contest! If you get a chance this week, please spend at least 8 hours each day this week voting for me -- if I finish in the top 3 (out of 12) I get to go to the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. And after that, I will travel the country to thank each of my supporters in person, assuming that I am not too famous for the little people at that point.

Here's the procedure:

• 1. Go to Ziddio.com. You have to register (which stinks, I know). The link to do so is in the upper right part of the screen -- I did it last week, and at least the process is pretty quick.
• 2. Click on the "Contests" tab and select "The Lucky 21."
• 3. In the Washington D.C. listings, I believe my clip will be listed as "unclejam76."
• 4. Vote for me!

Thanks very much to everyone who takes the time to do this, and super special thanks to those who spread the word to friends / co-workers / family. I promise that I will never ask for any kind of votes ever again, at least not until I am elected president in 2020.

New Video: Press Your Luck

Vegas, baby.

White House Jr.

I leave it to historians to decide if Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled our nation up from Depression or saddled it with crippling economic programs; whether he steadied our national character or infected the American spirit with a creeping sense of entitlement; whether he led us bravely to victory or left our forces idle for too long as the world plummeted into disaster.

I know only this: I would have hired him as an interior decorator.

The Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia (about 90 minutes from Atlanta), was a real kick. It was Roosevelt's home away from home away from home -- the place he spent his time when he wasn't in Hyde Park or Washington, because he liked to cool his largely paralyzed heels in the warm soothing waters of the Georgia mountains. It's a neat way to see the softer side of Roosevelt -- the guy who spent hours on end playing with polio-crippled kids in a swimming pool on his vacations away from ... uh ... putting people in camps.

Hey, it was a complicated time.

The house is tiny -- not quite what you'd expect from a guy with so much money that he used a cigarette holder and wore a top hat. It's almost like a mini beach house, only stuck in the mountains, and I would buy it totally furnished and decorated without touching a thing. (Sadly, I'm not top-hat rich.) Roosevelt was a navy fanatic (former assistant secretary, just like his cousing Teddy) and everything in the central living/dining room area is BOAT-TASTIC! Model ships, paintings of burning boats and John Paul Jones, a print of Lord Nelson ... plus everything is made of dark wood and rough around the edges (by Roosevelt's instructions), so you get that "captain's quarter's" kind of feel. Neat stuff. Roosevelt was sitting in that room having his portrait painted on April 12, 1945, when he experienced some technical difficulties with his brain. Three hours later, in the adjacent bedroom, he was dead.

Today the house is basically unchanged from the day he died -- the books on the shelves are Roosevelt's, the furniture is all original ... you can even see one of the leashes for Fala, FDR's terrier, hanging in the linen closet. They moved FDR's body from the bedroom, so you aren't getting the full experience, but it's still neat to see. And right down the road are the warm springs themselves -- FDR bought the bathing complex in the 1920s and renovated the whole thing for the use of the hydrotherapy institute he founded in town to help treat paralysis and whatnot. The pools are drained, but you can actually walk down in the bottom and feel some of the water coming out of one remaining fountain. It's in the 80s. And FYI, they don't like it when you try to wash your socks in it.

There's also a really nice on-site museum near the house with some info on FDR's ties to Georgia and one of his Fords, outfitted with the hand controls that FDR himself designed so he could go cruising around the mountains. When you imagine things in the modern media context, it's impossible to understand how FDR ever could have hidden the extent of his paralysis. But somehow, even though he founded a medical center to help similarly stricken kids, even though he could hardly stand, even though a small army of family members, servants, secret service and more all knew the extent of his condition, millions of Americans had no idea their leader was a cripple.

Mind boggling.

• FDR was in the habit of sneaking out for a drive, so the Secret Service put a blue light on the front porch that was lit to indicate whenever he was home. The bright red sock on the front door was to indicate when the house was a rockin'.
• Roosevelt played in the pool for hours with stricken kids when he visited Warm Springs, including the popular game "Marco Polio." The kids called him Rosey, and he responded by having the Secret Service rough them up a little bit.
• As a young prep schooler, Roosevelet was forced to play both football (he was 4th string) and baseball (he was the team manager). Which may explain the directive of 1943 which ordered all 1st, 2nd and 3rd string football players to the front lines.
• Roosevelt's experiences in rural Georgia (he purchased a tree farm near warm Springs) and his visits with farmers were strong influences when he pushed programs for farm aid, rural electrification and goverment subsidies for functionally illiterate racists.
• Fala's full name was Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. Really.
• The unfinished portrait is on display at the on-site museum, next to the finished caricature of Roosevelt as a race car driver.
• Eleanor had a separate bedroom which she rarely used; she usually didn't visit Warm Springs with her husband. Which is a good thing, because she did not look that hot in a two-piece.
• The radio in the Little White House living room had a dictaphone where Roosevelt could record radio addresses, and also practice his beat-boxing.
• The home became "The Little White House" only after FDR became president. Before that it was known to locals as "Cripply McGee's Summer Shack."
• Roosevelt smoked two packs a day of unfiltered Camels. He would have smoked five packs, but you know how it is with war rationing.

How to vote for yourself in an online contest, and win friends and influence people

This has officially been a really weird week. If you missed the video, I've been voting for myself in HBO's "Lucky 21" contest, over at Ziddio.com, trying to punch a ticket to the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. I started the week naively ... I thought that having friends and family chip in their votes would be enough to have a decent shot at victory (and thanks to everyone who did so). But then came word (via the grapevine and the Internet) that the New York regional winner basically camped at a computer and voted himself to more than 40 percent of the total vote share. Yee.

Would it happen in D.C.? Every time you vote in this contest, the computer gives you the vote share of each comedian -- it's like watching a horrible, slow-motion game show. If you followed the vote totals, early in the week, you could see people shooting up 10 to 15 percentage points over the span of a few hours (sometimes between 2 and 8 in the morning). Most comedians don't have that many friends, so that almost definitely meant self-voting in most cases.

I usually don't go for this sort of stuff, but my week was open, AND the prize is pretty cool. Plus I'm in the "manic" stage of proactiveness about my career. So I decided on Tuesday to start going for it. And once you're in, you have to go all-out. After a day of voting for myself, I was in the neighborhood of third place. Some of the comics put in the old college try before dropping out; others put the pedal to the metal and voted solidly for the better part of three days straight.

It looked like I was sitting fairly pretty in third place at mid-week (15 to 17 percent), but then on Wednesday, one guy went from zero percent of the vote to 20 percent at a ridiculous pace -- something like 12 hours. It wasn't crazy to think that someone could make a mad dash over the finish line if they were within range on the weekend.

(Cue "The Final Countdown")

That meant that Thursday, I had to work. I could have asked friends to start pouring it on, but it's kind of slimy -- the online equivalent of a "bringer" show where you're asking friends to pay to see you just so you can perform at all. Comedians with jobs would be free on the weekend to vote like crazy, if that was their plan. So the best bet was to floor it and try to put myself in a good spot before Saturday morning rolled around.

Sitting here Friday night, I've basically mastered the art of voting, to the point where it could be my new job. I should hire myself out to people hoping to win poorly-organized contests. My advice:

1) It's a science. Find out your optimum system performance. After some experimentation, I found that on my (sort of crappy) DSL connection, between my desktop and my laptop computers, I can open about nine Internet Explorer windows at once and have them all load a Ziddio.com page within a minute or so. Then, it's just a matter of letting keyboard commands work for you ... Page down! Enter! Close browser! Get into the groove, and you can go for hours on end. All those times I drove 12 hours to gigs in a single day with nothing but gas station breaks? That was all training for this. Thanks, divine providence!

2) Get SOME help. For example, I have an OCD girlfriend and a bored roommate who sometimes works from home. When you want to rest, that's a powerful combination.

3) Be unemployed. I can't stress this enough.

4) Embrace cable television. My eternal thanks to the good folks at the USA Network for running a 9-hour marathon of "Burn Notice" on Thursday. I had heard good things about that show, and now I've seen every episode. Also, I really owe a debt to the stalwarts: Frasier and Niles Crane, all 4 Golden Girls, and Fran Fine. You guys have always been there for me, from midnight to 2:30 a.m., carrying me through until "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" can take over. Much love.

5) Diet Pepsi. Just one calorie. And don't forget that laptops with wireless cards will work in the bathroom. It's a dirty, dirty game.

If you follow these guidelines, more than 24 hours later and close to a physical and emotional breakdown, you'll be ... in SECOND PLACE! Barely ahead of where you started, with two days to go. Whee. I have no idea how all this is going to finish through the weekend, but I predict it's going to get ugly. On Friday afternoon HBO reps sent a notice to all the contestants "reminding" comedians that "automated votes" are illegal, so that probably means that something fishy is going on. Again, whee.

But enough blogging! It's time to go vote for a few more hours, before collapsing in a total heap for about half a day.

SHOW BUSINESS!

Burn Notice

I think I now enjoy this show after watching every episode in a single nine-hour block. The only weak point: every episode, the hero and his associates piss all over international crime syndicates, and somehow no one ever hunts them down. He's already tangled with Colombian drug lords, Israeli arms dealers, Cuban street gangs, Jamaican smugglers and Russian intelligence. He never wears a disguise. Neither do his helpers. I guess it wouldn't be a very exciting series if they all got stabbed repeatedly in the face by Latin American hitmen, but this is really stretching my suspension of disbelief.

Plus, for a guy with no money, he seems to be dirtying Armani suits at a horrifying rate.

Talkin' Baseball

It might sound dumb in a era of HDTV and satellite dishes, but right now I'd rather hear a Phillies game on the Internet than watch a national TV broadcast with generic announcers. The Phillies radio team -- Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen -- is unbelievably entertaining. About five times a game Franzke suggests that Andersen might be drunk. If Andersen is on play-by-play and anything interesting happens, he can't keep up with the action; you just have to wait for the play to end and then have them explain it afterwards. Whenever something good happens and Scott is on play-by-play, Scott gets high-pitched and excited while Larry yells stuff like, "Yeah!" and "There you go!" During today's game, they talked for about five minutes about operating the heater in the broadcast booth and how Larry is wearing fake eyebrows. Seriously.

I think it all goes back to the simple theory that people are generally entertained by other people enjoying themselves. The radio team is basically just passable as far as painting a verbal picture of the game, but they seem to be having a gas. And if you're having a good time, the people watching or listening will have a good time too.

Something to think about.

Here comes the Hammer

I got my pictures back from my recent trips, so we'll start giving you a peek of the places I've been, starting off with the Braves/Nationals game last weekend. You're looking at the Hank Aaron statue outside Turner Field, the first pitch of the game and the (hated, evil) Tomahawk Chop in action.

Los Presidentes

I've also added some pictures to my president entries on FDR, Monroe, and Taft ... you can see everything on one page right here.

And finally ...

I think I'm done voting, as of 4 p.m. today. I don't have an exact tally, but I think spent about a quarter of the day Tuesday, a big chunk of the day Wednesday, all day Thursday and most of the day Friday glued to a computer. Not to mention a few hours today. I'm exhausted, and I need to get out of the house. If anyone wants to pass me, be my guest. You'll have earned it.

Of course, I reserve the right to recant this if it looks like I'm going to lose at the wire. BLECH!

Burn Baby Burn

I think you have to have lived through the 1960s to really "get" JFK (or The Doors, or feminism). On paper he's a bad president, and his credentials as a person are a bit iffy -- born with a silver spoon in every orifice, won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he didn't even write, cheated on his wife like it was his job, had offices essentially purchased by his dad, was narrowly elected president following *cough* highly irregular voting, basically because he looked prettier on television than Nixon. He didn't do a ton for the economy, he didn't really lift a finger for race relations, he led the country as close as it's ever been to nuclear war, and he put us on the path to Vietnam.

But people love him. Whatever he was, the moment he died he became a symbol. Instead of a one-term president with a bunch of flowery speeches and nothing to show for it, he was the inspiration that let other, more competent people actually get stuff done.

His gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery captures that dynamic. I'm not big on schmaltz, and I don't think all that much of JFK, but the eternal flame marking his grave is actually touching. The marker is simple, the torch is simple and the whole thing is eerily quiet. This is the part where I'm supposed wax poetic about indomitable passion and unconquerable energy, but I don't feel like it. Instead, go listen to "I Believe I Can Fly" off the "Space Jam" soundtrack.

Actually, while I'm thinking of it, that's what I want for my grave. R. Kelly playing on a continuous loop. Honor my wishes.

• The youngest elected president, though Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest to serve, and Eisenhower was relatively younger, what with being an android.
• Though a hunchback in terrible health, he scored like nobody's business. So much for your excuses, huh?
• The only Roman Catholic president, and therefore the only president that has any chance of going to heaven.
• The first Boy Scout to become president, and the only Boy Scout to earn the elusive "Nuclear Brinksmanship" merit badge.

JFK has a nice view -- across the Potomac, looking at the monuments over stone carvings of speeches he didn't write.

He also has good company. Bobby is next door. He gets a fountain, but another understated and graceful marker.

New Audio: Eastern Market Walking Tour

Earlier this month, I planned out and recorded a walking audio tour for my neighborhood, Washington D.C.'s Eastern Market. It's a two-mile trip with six major stops, covering parts of D.C.'s history and culture from the founding of the city all the way to the present day. The whole thing should take about an hour or less, depending on how much meandering the listener wants to do.

This is a test run -- if there's any demand for these kinds of tours, I'd be interested in putting them together for other parts of the city, various museums, etc. All you need is a an iPod or other MP3 player, and you start at the top of the Eastern Market Metro station (blue/orange lines, between 7th and 8th Streets on Pennsylvania Ave. SE). If you happen to try this out, please let me know what you think, good or bad.

The 11 MP3s that make up the tour saved in one zipped file. You can download it through this link.

You shouldn't need a map (it's a simple route and directions are included in the narration), but here's one just in case.