Metro expansion to Tysons and Dulles

Now in many respects I could care less if silly people could make it out to Tysons Corner to spend more money on really cool stuff that I just cannot afford. I say, let those people guzzle gas, sit in traffic and just deal with the costs of consumption. But let's be honest, extending rail to tysons and then on to dulles is not about the mega-shopping experiences to be had out that direction; it is about getting even some tiny portion of drivers off the road. Long-term, public transportation that people will use just makes sense. Crank out all of the free-market arguments that you want. Talk of viable alternatives such as rapid bus if you so choose. (Ride the circulator in DC. White people still will not use that one. I ride the bus in DC. I am an anomaly.) But what people will use is mass transit that involves train/rail in some capacity. So, here is my proposal: civil disobedience from a quasi-civil servant agency. Shut down metro for two weeks. Let people feel the pinch. Then start it up again for a day. Thereafter, shut it down again for an unspecified period of time. I don't drive-though I realize that people with kids and other responsibilities need to have cars. But if you want to get around entirely by car and be dependent on it, move to ohio.

Distortions at the Screen Actors Guild Awards

Daniel-Day Lewis (DDL), most recently of the excellent No Country for Old Men, made the following comment about Heath Ledger at the Screen Actors Guild Awards the other evening:
"That scene in the trailer at the end of the film is as moving as anything I think I've ever seen."

Now I found that scene touching, raw and, as DDL put it, "moving." But to rank it up there in significance with anything he has ever come across. I hope he is only making reference to film. Actors, unsurprisingly, occupy different landscapes than the rest of us normal people. However, to think that anything on film rivals something from what occurs in one's own world is just distorted. Don't know much about DDL, and do not really care to know, but give me a break. Go witness a child say something truly unbounded by all of the assumptions and collected crap that adults peddle around; witness some old couple that has been married for say half a century walking hand in hand along some sidewalk; or witness an actual gay couple exchange vows unencumbered by inane laws throughout this country that often prevent them from doing so. In short, get after some real life experiences; there one can justifiably locate truly moving experiences.