The holidaze are here.
Are you excited? The Notebook is certainly up with the program.
Some year-end questions can't wait for Jan. 1, mainly because we'll be on vacation next week.
Are we going to have a real mayor's race in 2010?
Will the city -- at long last -- get voting rights from Congress?
Will the Nats field a team that doesn't require that paper bags be passed out at the gates for embarrassed fans to wear? And would those paper bags cost you 5 cents under the city's new recycle program that starts Jan. 1?
If we really want to recycle, we'll collect all the bags confiscated at FedEx Field and reuse them at Nationals Park, or whatever the stadium will be called next year. Under the city's contract with the Ted Lerner ownership, the team can sell naming rights and keep the fees.
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We live near the Nationals' stadium but haven't seen any work crews making any name changes. Maybe Accenture, now that it's dumped Tiger Woods, would spend money on re-branding the ballpark.
Accenture Field? We don't think so. Accenture really isn't even a real name, is it? (RIP, Arthur Andersen.)
Gillette, which also not-so-gracefully dropped the Tiger shaving ads, could make it Gillette Field. But we already hear sports hacks typing furiously about "razor-sharp" fielding errors.
We'd like to hear your suggestions for which company could monetize, market and (basically) make bucks on naming the field after itself.
We're not sure how we got off on this boys-of-summer subject just when the Redskins were showing some life. But we'll continue anyway.
• RFK bust.
Before it's stolen or vandalized or truly forgotten, someone should go to the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium and retrieve the Kennedy bust that sits forlornly just outside the main gates.
When baseball returned to Washington, then-Mayor Anthony Williams pledged that the Kennedy bust would be saved and incorporated into the new field in some way.
The Lerners have added a number of modernistic bronze statues in the center field plaza, but Robert F. Kennedy is nowhere to be seen.
• Whirligig idea.
We sent this idea over to the stadium, but aren't sure it got anywhere. Out in left field to the right of the big scoreboard is a huge, curly W that is surrounded by a circle of stars. We think it would be cool to install a mechanism that would light up those stars and make them spin whenever there's a home-team home run or victory.
It would be a lot more fun than the pitiful bursts of fireworks that now erupt.
It also would catch the eyes of young people and the video game crowd. So what it if it makes the old folks dizzy.
• Happy Festivus.
You probably have to be a fan of the old "Seinfeld" episodes to know what Festivus is all about. Google or Bing it for more details than we'll give here.
Suffice to report that here's your chance to air your grievances in a new old-fashioned way.
Head over to 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, where you can take part in the Festivus celebration being put on by the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District. (That the group's name is too damn long ought to be one of the grievances.)
Anyway, on the northeast corner, there's a Festivus bulletin board where you're invited to post your own grievances and observations. (Among my favorites are two notices side by side, apparently referring to Tiger. One note states simply, "boys cheat," and right next to it, the other note says, "girls cheat, too.")
A lot of the brief posts include profanity, some in a fun way, some just vulgar. But the point of the fake holiday Festivus is to air grievances about how people, institutions and family have disappointed you all year.
On Saturday/Sunday at noon, you could catch someone reading aloud those grievances that are appropriate for reading aloud. The Notebook was pleased to take part this past Saturday. We're told there may be a YouTube version posted soon.
• Oh! About those weighty questions on the mayor's race and city politics and voting rights?
Our train of thought left the station in a different direction. We'll get back to them after vacation.
• Wedding bells?
Near the Notebook's deadline Tuesday, the D.C. Council took its second and final vote on same-sex marriage, voting 11-2 again to join the states of Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont in legalizing such marriages.
But unlike those states that have true American rights and privileges, the D.C. measure now begins an uncertain journey up to Capitol Hill, where it's subject to any manner of legislative mischief over the next 30 legislative days.
Still, Tuesday was a day of celebration for supporters of the D.C. measure.
At-large member Phil Mendelson called the vote "the final step in this long march."
