I've been watching Burn Notice because my cousin David recommended it. I guess it's like Justified, but I don't like it nearly as much. Justified takes place in the dirty south among hillbillies and disgusting druggies while Burn Notice is in Miama and all the characters are Miami-slick. Every episode is like Ocean's Eleven, where the emotions displayed range from pre-mission smug self-assuredness to post-mission, "I knew it would work," smug self-congratulation. When a good guy finally gets captured, I find myself wishing that the resulting interrogation/torture would involve some actual emotional display. Instead it's all carefree witty banter amid violence, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith or James Bond. I find myself hoping for interrogations that include severed fingers or something else that might wipe the smirks off their faces.

I guess comparing the show to bad movies is a sign that I don't like the show, but I did manage to watch the entire first season and it had some entertaining moments. Bruce Campbell is of course endlessly likeable and the main guy has occasional funny moments. There's also a one and a half-dimensional character of a woman the writers threw into the mix but she doesn't ruin every scene (though she does try). It's all mildly entertaining, but it's no Justified.

(from the Veep)
Oil Lobbyist: This bill is a f***ing disgrace. And I'm going to see to it personally that it gets chewed up like a dead prostitute in a woodchipper. Just wanted to let you know.

I only have one beer left in my fridge and safeway stops selling alcohol at 10pm, which would require some late night jogging to make it on time. It's quite the predicament. Exactly how lazy am I feeling? But it just occurred to me that my mom bought a half-gallon of OJ when she was here last weekend, and I have a lot of old vodka in my freezer. A solution presents itself! It's like they say, when a door closes, God opens a window.
 
I thought about wandering down to the Adams Morgan karaoke. Somewhere inside me is a star. But I'll save that for a night when I'm prepared to stay out later than tonight.

Champions at trivia tonight! Probably not due to my contributions. Don't listen to me when I talk about chewing gum being a non-food choking hazard, but do listen to Rachel when it's about Charles Lindbergh's age. (I think I ballparked that one with my contribution of "Well, James Stewart wasn't super young or very old." ...Actually, Wikipedia says James Stewart was 48 years old when he filmed The Spirit of St. Louis, which was one of the noteable inaccuracies of that movie. Whoops.)

None of us knew about the "Hubble length". Though the trivia DJ's understanding of it was wrong. He said the Hubble length is the width of the observable universe. That would be true if the universe wasn't expanding, but due to its expansion we can observe much further. (Actually, he may have said "visible universe" which I guess would be accurate.) (And I just noticed that I messed up the addition on my credit card bill, so that the bill+tip does not equal the total. Nobody's perfect.)

There was some discussion in the car about why our team does so poorly in Arlington but so well in DC. The Arlington crowd is a little older, but I think its more important that the trivia DJ in DC is our age, and I'm not sure where he gets his questions from but they're less about history and geography, and more specific about current pop culture or quirky facts you might notice on wikipedia. Tonight's music round, for example, was mostly pop singles from the 90s, with a bit of Michael Jackson from the 70s and one song from the 60s. No classical music, no country music, nothing too werid. It's like music you or I would have on our ipod.  Also, there was a round entirely about "most profitable film franchises" and wikipedia has a chart showing exactly that.  I think the DJ guy just researches random stuff off Wikipedia.

I have a Korn sweatshirt given to me long ago by an uncle. You remember that hard rock band?  I was once a big fan.  The sweatshirt has "Korn" spelled out in skulls on the front, and I always thought it was kinda cool. Then tonight I wore it to walk to 7-11 and the cashier there asked me what message my shirt was trying to say about the Koran. Hrmm.

Saturday I went with Rachel to Flying Dog brewery where we got a tour and drank some small-sized "mugs" of each beer. I didn't especially like any of the beers, but they were free.  I'm not sure what I expect of a brewery, but this one seemed exactly the same as the only other brewery I've seen, which was some brewery out by the ocean. (Dogfish Head?  Maybe.)  They're both somewhat cool buildings with a handful of rooms, each with large metal vats. It was an alright tour. Fairly quick with some interesting trivia.  Rachel had to wear some rubber shoes over her sandals, maybe because they're worried about airborn foot fungus? I'm not sure what the reason was. We stayed afterwards for some brewery festivities, then we accidentally took the long route back to VA and went to visit Puja and Sunjeev. It was a very pleasant day.

Now more details in list form, because I'm tired of narrating:

-Rachel pointed out undiscovered grey hairs on the side of my head that are too far back for me to see. I'm not sure I appreciate it.

-We discussed what to do if you're eating alone and start choking. It's a grim scenario for me because my desk chair has wheels. I try not to watch anything too funny while I eat.

-I'm pretty sure we decided that the only people whose house you can just show up at without calling ahead are your parents. Or I decided that anyway. Rachel said it also goes for any house to which you've been given a key, but I'm not so sure. (Just to be safe, none of my neighbors here have my spare apartment key.) This was discussed in connection to just showing up at Puja's house without calling ahead, which Rachel was initially for. Maybe she thinks we should be more of a "just drop in" society.

-I tried some french fries seasoning that everyone was surprised I hadn't heard of before. Yet now I can't even remember the name of it. It was like some crab favored powder. I wasn't a huge fan. I prefer mustard or just salt on my fries.
 
All for now.  Eric is somewhere around DC.  I might see him today.