RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!! (Vol. 1, No. 2)

After a successful first entry in the "RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!!" series, I thought that it would be a few weeks before I'd have another set of randomness for your enjoyment.  However, I underestimated myself as I not only came up with four more in a short amount of time, but I also have a few already on standby for next Tuesday.  Speaking of four more, the reason why I decided to post a picture of one of my favorite rappers of all time, The Notorious B.I.G., is because I thought about his line from "Last Day": "Nine-hundred and ninety-six grams, you need four mo'."  Yeah...that's how my beautiful mind works, so all forty something of you who decided to view last week's batch of madness signed up for this.  Hence, you must now commit to it and subject yourselves to even more shenanigans because the party's just beginning...

Scribbler's 11th Hour Post of the Week: The WMATA Chronicles, My Love/Hate Affair with D.C. Metro

Hello everyone...my name is Dirk Scribbler...and I'm a D.C. Metro geek.  (Cue the other weirdos in the room screaming, "HI, DIRK!!!")  Ever since seeing this commercial on TV that featured a toy bus and train that was never for sale--believe me, I researched it and asked my mom and dad about it to no avail--I have been fascinated by every and all things Metro since 1985.  I know what the Flxible New Looks, the GMC "Fishbowls", the MAN SG310s or the God-forsaken Neoplan AN440s are.  (If you rode a bus out of Southeast between the mid-1980s and the early-1990s that was supposed to be an upgrade from the older New Look models but got stuck on one that broke down, then you already know what a Neoplan AN440 is, too, and can understand my bittersweet disdain.)  You didn't need to go all the way to Metro Center or call 637-7000 because I was the original Metro NextBus for the hood, literally possessing every bus schedule in circulation.  Entire Saturdays and Sundays were blocked out to either build scale-model Metrobuses out of cardboard paper or ride bus routes and subway lines from one end to the other.  Oh yeah, and it also doesn't help that at least four relatives on my dad's side of the family currently work for Metro; heck, I wanted to be a bus driver when I was eight years old and my first job at 22 was nearly with Metro if it weren't for a six-month waiting period to enter their training program.  I guarantee that you probably won't find anybody in your six degrees of separation who is as obsessed with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) as I was and, to a certain degree, still am.  However, amidst rising fares, safety hazards, an aging rolling stock of rail cars and a revolving door of general managers--they went ten months without one last year--the Metro that I grew up loving so much is just not the award-winning transit system that it used to be.  As a youth, all I had to do was make sure that I had enough tokens or enough on my student farecard to get to and from school and just enjoy the ride.  Now I have the thought of possibly not making it home in one piece sitting deep in my subconscious.  So being inspired by frequent conversations that I have with Facebook friends as well as an actual page of the same name started by one of my high school friends, entertain me as I go through my own personal "WMATA Chronicles".

I Kinda Miss Southeast

When the late, great Honorable Marion S. Barry, Jr., passed away on November 23rd, I realized that I missed more than just the undisputed "Mayor For Life" of Washington, D.C. and one of my most influential mentors.  Seeing so many faces in the crowds as his funeral procession came down Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue by "The Big Chair" or while attending his public funeral service at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center brought on a bittersweet sense of nostalgia.  In the process, I said to myself, "I love the fact that I grew up in Southeast and that our mayor and councilmember fought for us when no one else was brave enough to do so.  More than that, I love my people."  Then, when two fellow alumni of Mayor Barry's Youth Leadership Institute (MBYLI) decided to run for his seat on the D.C. Council--Sheila Bunn, former chief of staff for the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton and the Honorable Vincent Gray, and Christopher Barry, Mayor Barry's son--I was excited for the potential direction in which Ward 8 could head and made me want to be involved somehow, but remembered that my driver's license now says "Silver Spring, MD".  (The differences between the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles and Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration could be another blog post alone, but I digress.)  So if you were to put my sentiments to an old Manhattans tune, you might come to the following conclusion: I kinda miss Southeast.  Let me tell you some of the things that I do miss...