Camera phone FTW

Monday night marked the first game of the Angels-Nats interleague series, so I dusted off my incredibly large Angels jersey (no really, it’s like really big. I bought it before they started making the women’s cut, so I swim around in the smallest men’s size) and headed down to Nationals Park.

A few highlights (and eh, lowlights while we’re at it) of the game:

- I went with Josh, a friend of mine from high school and fellow Angels fan who recently moved to DC for grad school. I haven’t seen Josh since I graduated from high school over eight years ago (uh, wow that was a long time ago), so it was great to catch up with him. He’s really tall now, and, like, a man. Crazy.

- Upon exiting the metro, I was greeted by several Greenpeace/CCAN/FOE/whatev protesters urging me to boo ExxonMobil during the 7th inning stretch. Yes, protesters at a baseball game. Welcome to Washington, DC. Instead, I cheered for ExxonMobil during the 7th inning stretch and made a mental note to wear an “I love Exxon” shirt to the next game.

- While I was waiting for Josh, a Nats employee who hangs out around the automated ticket machines and box office started chatting with me. He then offered to sell me tickets to the game that he personally had in his possession. Yes, a Nats employee was scalping his own personal tickets to the game. WTF?

- Hour long rain delay, but once the weather cleared, it turned out to be a perfect night for a ballgame.
- The service at the concessions stands is still horrible, or maybe I’m just cursed. At the last game I was at, Mike and I waited 20 minutes for our hot dogs. This time, Josh and I waited 15+ minutes for our nachos because the cheese was “cold” and needed to warm up. I asked one of the workers at the concession stand if they could give us our trays of chips, and then we could walk across the breezeway to the nacho stand there and ask them for cheese. The worker looked at me like I was an idiot, shook her head and said, “No, I can’t vouch for them.” WTF? You can’t vouch for the nacho stand 30 feet away? So we waited…and waited, until I finally said, “Hey, ya know, how about you just give us the cheese as it is? We don’t care if it’s cold.” (I’m thinking, how cold can this cheese possibly be?). Again, the worker gives me a “I can’t believe I have to deal with this idiotic customer” look, reaches for a tray, pumps a small amount of cheese into it, and tells Josh and I to dip our fingers in it to see if it was alright. And you know what? THE CHEESE WAS NOT AT ALL COLD! WTF!? Seriously, worst concession stands I’ve ever been to. Love the Ben’s Chili Bowl half smoke, but don’t want to wait 20 minutes for it.

- Later that evening, I went to the beer concession stand to grab us two beers. The old lady running the stand said to me, “You’re coming up on your third round. I’ve been watching you.” Actually, that was my third round, but still, WTF is up with the beer police?

- During the traditional 4th inning Presidents Race, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington proceeded to chase down Teddy Roosevelt and beat the hell out of him with sticks, LAPD style. No joke. It was kinda disturbing, yet hilarious.

- Attendance was really, really low. A few innings into the game, we had an entire row to ourselves, and several rows in front of and behind us were vacant as well.

- I’m always amazed when I run into people on the East Coast wearing Angels gear. It’s comforting to see fellow California expats in their jerseys and flip-flops.

- Sadly, my Rally Monkey is back home in California.

- ANGELS WIN!

- I think we thoroughly annoyed the Nats fans on our metro car on the way home (“Hey, who won that game?” “I think it was, uh, yeah, pretty sure it was the Angels.”)

Next month, I expect that Josh and I will watch the Angels take on the Orioles in Baltimore. Watch out, Camden Yards.

That’s the 22 year old guy who ran AEY Inc., the company that landed the nearly $300 million government contract to supply ammunition to Afghan security forces, and fulfilled it by giving the Afghans substandard ammunition that was made in China.
Anyways, Efraim and the other AEY “executives” were recently indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy:

According to the indictment, Mr. Diveroli, his colleagues and the company sought “to unjustly enrich themselves” by shipping aged Chinese rifle cartridges to Afghanistan after claiming they were made in Albania. The Army contract and American law prohibit trading in Chinese arms.

[...]

The charges cap a federal criminal investigation that began last year into the dealings of the fledgling company and its group of 20-something executives. The American military relied on them to be a principal supplier of ammunition to the Afghan security forces.

In March, the Army suspended Mr. Diveroli and the company from future federal contracts, contending that he sent a different shipment of Chinese cartridges to Afghanistan after certifying that they were made in Hungary. A month later, the State Department suspended the company’s international export activities, blocking its other business.

“This is a sobering development,” Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement on Friday. “The more we learn about AEY, the more questions we have.”

Before the charges were announced, the committee had said it would hold a hearing next Tuesday on AEY’s activities.

Whoa! Congress is actually holding a hearing on something that matters?! But what about the use of steroids in horse racing?!

In January 2007, the Army awarded AEY a contract, potentially worth $298 million, that made it the primary munitions supplier for Afghan security forces in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

According to the indictment, the contract required AEY to certify that it was providing “serviceable and safe ammunition.” The Army contract also banned supplying ammunition acquired “directly or indirectly from a Communist Chinese military company.”

But the charges accuse the AEY employees and the associate of providing “instructions and guidance” on how to remove Chinese markings from the ammunition, to conceal its origins. With each shipment to Afghanistan, the charges say, Mr. Diveroli falsely certified that the Chinese rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in Albania.

Federal authorities said that based on these false submissions, the Army paid AEY about $10.3 million for 35 shipments of Chinese ammunition.

An examination by The New York Times earlier this year uncovered documents from Albania that showed that AEY bought more than 100 million Chinese cartridges that had been stored for decades in former cold war stockpiles. Mr. Diveroli then arranged to have them repacked in cardboard boxes, many of which split or decomposed after shipment to the war zones. Different lots or types of ammunition were mixed. In some cases the ammunition was dirty, corroded or covered with a film.

Rick Dutrow, Big Brown’s trainer and the man who put the use of steroids in horse racing front and center with his colt’s bid for a Triple Crown, is ill and will not testify as expected Thursday before a Congressional subcommittee examining drug use and fatalities in the sport.

[...]

Even though he will be absent, Dutrow will be invoked as the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection holds a hearing titled “Breeding, Drugs, and Breakdowns: The State of Thoroughbred Racing and the Welfare of the Thoroughbred Racehorse.”

The breakdown and on-track euthanization of the filly Eight Belles after she finished second in the Kentucky Derby, and Dutrow’s admission that Big Brown was injected with the anabolic steroid Winstrol, will focus the subcommittee’s attention on fatalities and drugs, and their relation to each other.

A Congressional hearing on steroids in horse racing? WTF?

Came across 500mL cans of Strongbow during last night’s YPE happy hour at Rocket Bar in Chinatown (714 7th Street NW).

Updated list:
- Fado Irish Pub in Chinatown (draft)
- Elephant & Castle Pub (draft)
- Finn macCool’s Irish Publick House (draft)
- 51st State Tavern (draft)
- Chevy Chase Wine & Spirits (500 mL cans)
- Circle Liquors (500 mL cans)
- Whole Foods Market on P Street (500 mL cans)
- Sherry’s Wine & Liquor (500 mL cans)
- Brickskeller (500 mL cans)
- Rocket Bar (500 mL cans)
Just outside DC:
- Flanagan’s Harp & Fiddle (Bethesda) (draft)

Senator Arlen Specter said he would not pursue Congressional hearings on the New England Patriots’ videotape scandal.

“There’s not much more I can do at this point,” Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, told the editorial board of The Philadelphia Daily News on Monday. “We’ve exposed a lot. But the public attention span is so limited.”

[...]

At a news conference last month, after interviewing the former Patriots video aide Matt Walsh, Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called for an independent investigation similar to baseball’s Mitchell report on steroids.

[...]

Two weeks ago, Specter entered a statement in the Congressional Record, saying, “The commissioner’s investigation has been fatally flawed.”

Specter’s office stressed that he did not necessarily consider the matter closed.

“The mood is not right,” he said. “We’ve got too many other bigger problems to deal with.”

Yeah, ya think?

As I previously mentioned, the entire reason I took this trip to New York City was to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium. After NYPD gave us the go ahead to leave the scene of the accident, we caught another cab.

“Did something happen here?” our new cab driver inquired.

“Yeah, our cab driver hit just hit a pedestrian. As far as I’m concerned, if you get us to the hotel without incident, I’ll consider you the greatest cab driver in the city.”

We arrived at the hotel, checked-in, and headed down to the bar to have a few pints and watch Russia beat Greece in the Euro2008 tournament. The weather did not seem very conducive to an evening of baseball, as it had been raining sporadically, but we figured it would clear in time for the game.

Not quite. We arrived at Shea around 6:15pm and the rain started to pick up. We bought tickets for seats in the covered upper reserve area and waited for the storm to pass. Our seats were pretty good, and we were definitely surrounded by some, uh, entertaining New Yorkers. Shea Stadium was pretty disappointing, though. There was nothing special about it (might as well have been back at RFK stadium) and you could tell they had really skimped on maintenance for the past few years. Most of the rows weren’t even lettered, so it was amusing to watch people attempt to find their seats (“This K?” “No, this is J.” “What? I thought this was L.”). Citi Field, which is being built right next to Shea and is due to open in 2009, looks like it will make an excellent ballpark, though.

Game time rolled around, and conditions were still too poor for play. The announcer came over the loudspeaker and told us that the National Weather Service predicted the storm would pass in half an hour and the game could begin afterwards.

Laura mentioned that it would be fun to slide across the wet tarp that blanketed the infield, like a giant Slip ‘n Slide.

Here’s a video I took of the Slip ‘n Slide action:

With the fresh batch of storms rolling in, an announcement went out that the game was canceled and that we had a year to use our tickets for another Mets game.

“Ugh, we have to come back to this city?!”

So, yeah, between the incident with our cab and the rainout at Shea Stadium, this weekend jaunt to New York kinda, well, sucked.

I made a quick trip to New York City this weekend. One of my roommates, Laura, had a Sunday flight to Israel out of JFK airport and had decided to go up to NYC a day early. We looked up the schedule for the Mets and Yankees, and since the Mets were in town I decided to tag along so we could cross Shea Stadium off our list of ballparks to visit. Rather than taking the ridiculously overpriced Amtrak train to NYC, we opted for the BoltBus, which picks you up at Metro Center in DC and drops you off near Penn Station in NYC. The buses are clean, comfortable, and have free wi-fi and electrical outlets for those who bring along their laptops. Not bad for $40 roundtrip.

We hailed a cab to take us to our hotel, and ended up with a driver who had absolutely no idea how to get to the hotel, so he spent a majority of his time talking with his dispatcher in order to get directions. We were about five minutes into our ride, when, attempting to make a left hand turn at an intersection, our driver struck a pedestrian who was walking through the crosswalk. The odd thing was, he had slowed down while making the turn, so Laura and I had both assumed he was waiting for the pedestrian to cross so that he could complete the turn. Instead, though, he sped up, and all we heard was the sickening sound of steel hitting flesh, followed by the pedestrian falling to the ground.

All three of us immediately got out of the cab. The pedestrian was a well dressed woman, probably in her mid 60s, who was screaming at the cab driver.

“YOU IDIOT! I HAD A GREEN LIGHT!”

I looked down at her left foot and thought I was going to be sick. It had been run over by the cab’s tire, and the upper half was completely unrecognizable. It was now an indistinguishable mass of exposed flesh, bone, and muscles, with blood slowly pooling all over the asphalt.

Thankfully, Laura is a certified EMT and had been carrying a small bag of supplies in her luggage. She yelled at the cabbie, who was quickly descending into a state of hysteria, to open the trunk so she could reach them. She put on her gloves and began to perform her tasks. A bystander called 911, and another ran off to a nearby apartment building to locate the woman’s husband.

The cabbie, meanwhile, had gone up to the women and was absentmindedly attempting to reattach the sole of her foot, which had been sliced to about halfway down her foot and was now hanging down, exposing the muscles and bone. Laura told him to back off, and he slowly sank to the ground, his back against the cab.
An EMT had been driving by the scene in her SUV and pulled over to see what was going on. About 30 seconds later, three NYPD cars pulled up, followed by a firetruck and ambulance. A cop walked up to me and said in a thick New York accent, “Ma’am, we can’t have any bystanders here. I need you to move to the sidewalk.”

“Oh, I was in that cab.”

“Sarge, we got a witness here.” He nodded in the direction of the cabbie, who was slumped against the cab, head in his hands, and clothes smeared in blood. “That your driver?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, at least he cares that he hit someone.”

The cabbie was now hyperventilating, and a bystander was pouring water over his head, trying to get his attention. Two firefighters tried to get him up on his feet, but he fainted, so they moved him to the sidewalk and began to administer oxygen to him.

The paramedics put the woman on a stretcher and sped off to the hospital. One of the cops got in the cab, which still had the woman’s grocery bag on its hood, and moved it to the side of the street. The firefighters retrieved a bucket of sand and began to spread it over the blood that had collected on the asphalt. Another cop pulled Laura and I to the side and took down our names and contact information. He told us we were now free to go, so we grabbed our bags from the cab.

“So…I guess we should grab another cab?”

NYC for the weekend, originally uploaded by lfincher.

In NYC for the weekend. Mets game tonight. Our cab driver hit a pedestrian on the way to our hotel (she will survive). More on that later.

Thanks to a former co-worker who informed me of my appearance in today’s edition of the Washington Post Express. I usually grab a copy of the Express on my way down to the bowels of hell (aka metro) but the Examiner lady was closer so I got one of those. Figures.

#1 and #2.