Eight Feet Deep

Perhaps some movement will come out of the Florida primaries. John McCain has apparently won with Der Mitten Romney in 2nd place. Rudy, from what I am hearing on TV, will be dropping out and endorsing McCain. As for Billary, she won in the “Sunshine State” as she is such a ray of sunshine. No, I’m just kidding about her being a ray of sunshine. Even though she won in Florida it is considered a “beauty contest,” which I also find confounding.

I may have to vote for Willie Nelson once again for president.

As I promised last time, well maybe I didn’t promise but I said I might, I present here some mini-reviews of places where I have dined while in the Washington, D.C., area. Here is how it will work: The criticisms will not be critical unless the place is just so horrible that it made me sick or violent. So far, none of the places in which I have dined while up in the D.C. environs have had such adverse effects upon me.

Last night I met an old college friend for dinner in Virginia. Mary and I spent at least some of our trying to remember how long it had been since we had seen one another. I don’t think either of us actually figured it out but it was in the 20-plus-year range, we finally decided.

My friend took me to a Tex-Mex place in her neighborhood of Alexandria, Va. Now if I had sought out a place to eat in Virginia with someone other than an old friend, I probably wouldn’t have chosen a Mexican restaurant since I live in Texas. Nonetheless, the poblano chiles rellenos were very good and the place had an impressive mas Southwestern decor that wasn’t felt bullfighters or Elvis. The food took a back seat to catching up with my old friend, or rather it was a bonus.

Los Tios Grill #2
2615 Mt. Vernon Ave.
Alexandria, Va.
Price: Reasonable

Since the class I am here for (as a requirement of my part-time government job) is, and previous classes I have had were, very near Union Station in downtown D.C., I have eaten lunch in the giant rail station on numerous occasions at its many restaurants and fast-fooderies (not a word, not a problem!) For some reason, I have never until today noticed the Station Grill even though it is located just to the side of the Massachusetts Avenue entrance where I normally enter the station.

Today I had their Reuben with home fries and iced tea. Once again I have to compliment the people in these parts on their iced tea. You can actually taste it unlike the same drink in most of the places back home. My theory has been that perhaps people back in Texas drink iced tea so much that the large receptacles from which they are dispensed rarely get a break and thus a cleaning. I don’t know this for a fact, just a guess. The Reuben was a little on the buttery side and the last thing I needed were fried potatoes but I didn’t go hungry. The bar, which is where I ate, was a nice old hardwood structure of the kind every bar should have. I suppose the only disturbing thing I saw was a customer sitting next to me who did something I had only experienced before in Arkansas. He ordered a barbeque pork sandwich which came with cole slaw on the side and he topped the ‘que with the cole slaw. In Arkansas the sandwich actually came with slaw on top. In both places I wanted to scream: “What the hell is wrong with you people!”

Station Grill
Union Station
50 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington, D.C.
Price: Not too expensive for D.C.

Since I got back to the hotel at 9 p.m. last evening and I returned at 5:30 p.m. today, I decided to seek out an eatery close by. This was even though the hotel had gratis baked potatoes and chili (Oh my! I had to pass, as I told a fellow Texas classmate, I don’t eat chili outside of Texas or die trying not to).

There is an Argentinean restaurant next door that I probably will try before I leave but it just didn’t seem appealing this evening nor did the almost equally nearby Ruth’s Chris Steak House where a meal just about will gobble up my per diem. But I found a little Chinese place around the block. It was a nice place, had kind of an old feel to it and very courteous waiters.

Also to be found were good portions. I had the Imperial shrimp, which along with jumbo shrimp (which were the type found in the Imperial) seems like an oxymoron. The meal itself was a little on the bland side but it was damned sure filling. Of course in an hour or so …

There was an elderly couple who came to dine out and despite the batteries for their hearing aids which they conversed about for several minutes, they apparently were still kind of hard of hearing and talked sort of loud, bless their hearts. They were a cute couple though, the gentleman dressed up in a suit and the lady in a nice dress. I felt like the slob that I was. The best line of the night was from the woman:

“I can’t eat like I did when I was a kid of 75.”

Still, I imagine one would find a dish of their liking at the Moon Gate Restaurant as they have a very extensive menu.

Moon Gate Restaurant
4613 Willow Lane
Bethesda, Md.
Price: Very reasonable considering the portions

Thus concludes my non-critical criticisms on a two-state, one-district-which-has-taxation-without-representation dining binge. Maybe I will write something more inspiring tomorrow. I mean, there is always hope.

As restaurant chains go Pizzeria Uno Chicago Grill at least does a credible imitation of your corner bar and grill.

The grill was where I headed last night after getting checked into my hotel in Bethesda. I had eaten there a couple of time when I last stayed here almost a year ago. As was the case then, the service this Monday evening was a little erratic. I ate in the bar and noticed the barkeep was having a difficult time juggling several balls in the air.

I had the individual Numero Uno which is their kitchen sink deep dish pizza. The filling in the pie — cheese, sausage, pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, peppers — was delicious but was perched upon precious little crust.

Uno has a pretty welcoming atmosphere — albeit manufactured — and would be the kind of place friends would go for a pie and a couple of cold ones.

I might try to do a couple of other “Meaty Mondays” this week if I find some other eating places in the Greater District of Columbia Area that fickle my tancy. I mean, why shouldn’t I, I hardly do Meaty Mondays on Mondays.

Uno Chicago Grill
7272 Wisconsin Ave.
Bethesda, Md. (or one near you in U.S., Saudi Arabia and South Korea)
301-986-8667
Not too many $s

(Ed. note: Yes I know it is “Buy and Bust” and not the opposite. I just wanted to make sure I am keeping you on your toes.

A suspected drug dealer was shot and killed by police last night just a few miles away from where I live. The scenario, which played out in a fast-food parking lot in Beaumont, Texas, happens probably in great numbers every day across the country.

Police call the exercise aimed at snaring a drug dealer in the act as “buy and bust.” There is nothing magic about how it goes down, it’s just like it sounds. A suspect is targeted. An undercover cop arranges a drug buy with the suspect. Police stage themselves around the area and hope things go well for them. But if things don’t turn out in favor of the cops or the suspects — as in this case — someone may get wounded or even killed.

From what the above-linked story indicates, the alleged dealer tried to run over officers with his Chevy pickup. Most telling was the little fact that the man shot by police was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Figure what you want but that act seemed to me as if the suspect thought gunplay might ensue. Perhaps he even figured out the potential customer was a narc.

Most of the general public will likely not share a tear for the deceased. Hey, it’s just another casualty in the so-called “War on Drugs” which seems to have been lost many, many years ago. But what the public should recognize is that the undercover narc or any of the other officers who showed up for the bust could just as easily have been harmed as the bad guy.

If the police is going to continue to arrest people for selling small amounts of drugs — I don’t know if that was the case in this incident but usually small amounts are taken in this kind of operation — then they should really look hard at the cost-benefit ratio.

The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing — a cop think-tank if you will — points out that although such tactics can lessen “open-air market” drug sales, the dealers will often change their tactics. Buy and bust hardly make a dent in the drug distribution system. And because small amounts of drugs usually are confiscated the result is that the dealers who are busted rarely get lengthy prison sentences.

What is the cost and what is the benefit? It is something that should be examined every time an incident like this takes place. But what do I know, right?

Beam me up before the nuts get here!

It’s deja vu or so it seems in Stephenville, Texas, a north central Texas town that has been getting a lot of national attention lately because of a spate of UFO sightings. Just as the military disputed claims related to UFO mania in Roswell, N.M., so is the military now correcting themselves concerning the Stephenville sightings.
The Air Force now says it was mistaken when it said their jets had not been flying in the vicinity of Stephenville UFO sightings. A story written by Angela K. Brown, one of the best Associated Press correspondents in Texas that I can recall, reported the Air Force decided to come clean “in the interest of public awareness.”

Still, a lot of folks around Stephenville, located in the middle of the state’s largest dairy producing area, don’t think the objects they saw were military planes. Some even initially said Air Force jets had been chasing the unidentified objects.

After I first heard about this story I wondered if perhaps the UFOs being seen were not really new aerial surveillance methods being carried out over dairy farms by their downstream neighbors in Waco.

In a saga with which I have more familiarity than I ever really wanted to, dairy farms in the Erath County area were blamed in part for polluting the North Bosque River which feeds Lake Waco downstream. That lake supplies drinking water for Waco and the surrounding area. Dairy waste which finds it way into the river via rainfall runoff dumps phosphorus into the river which in turn causes great blooming algae that makes Waco drinking water taste and smell like a herd of goats.

The city of Waco has fought the dairy industry as well as individual farms through lawsuits and overflights in helicopters during which aerial photos have shown environmental infractions by certain dairies.

So maybe it’s just a new tactic by Waco against the dairies. But probably not.

Speaking of Waco and flashes from the past, I notice in one of the local Stephenville daily’s stories are quotes from self-proclaimed “UFO expert” Jason Leigh of Cleburne, Texas.

Leigh first came to my attention on a cold, windy day in 1998 when I lived in Waco. Early on a Sunday morning Leigh drove his Jeep through the glass doors of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Regional Office near downtown Waco and told police he had possession of C-4 explosives. He finally came out that night after a standoff of about 16 hours with only a long gun and no bomb material. Leigh finally was sent for awhile to a federal prison that specialized in “mental health.”

Ah the memories. It’s great to know that the more things change, the more they remain things.