I Will Always Love The Washington Nationals

Poor Zim, Hula Girl thought.  2012 had been a banner year for the Washington Nationals, finishing the regular season with the best record in baseball and finally bringing some enthusiasm back for the national pastime in the Capital.  To have their season brought to a halt so brutally in the top of the ninth inning of Game 5 of the NLDS was a crushing blow to many, but as the Nats’ first draft pick way-back-when and the unofficial face of the franchise, could there be anybody else who felt the pain as deeply as Ryan Zimmerman?  Hula Girl could see that though he was trying hard to smile, Ryan’s heart was broken.  Come to me, Ryan, she longed to say to him, and let me take away the hurt.  Let me kiss it all better. That she would have kissed him anyway, regardless of whether or not the Nats were still in the playoffs, was neither here nor there.  

#Natitude

There’s no witty story today.  Instead, we dedicate this post to the Washington Nationals, who need to win tonight to stay in the playoffs.  And we LOVE the Washington Nationals.  So much so that we named the white Let-Teddy-Win bear Danny Esbearnosa, after our second baseman, who is also from California and kinda Hispanic, like us.  Go Nationals!  Natitude!  Get your red on!  BEAT THE CARDINALS!  STAY IN IT, BOYS!  WE LOVE YOU!

You Can’t Frape The Willing

Tim had come home from a relaxing Sunday dinner party with friends, and was looking forward to spending the rest of the evening in the peace and quiet of his own living room.  Getting in the way of this goal was the unfortunate fact that his phone had been constantly beeping with notification messages ever since he had left the party.  Finally checking the phone, Tim discovered that “42 people liked” and “23 people commented on” his wall post on Facebook.  Wall post?  Tim hadn’t been on Facebook in three days, at least.  What was this nonsense all about?  Tim opened his profile, and to his dismay saw a status update that said, “I just shaved part of my body for the first time, go ahead and guess which part…”  What?  How in the dickens did that get there?  Did some little cyber-punk hack into his account?  Thinking back, Tim realized that he had left his phone unattended on the table for two minutes while he went to the bathroom before he had departed the dinner party.  Since he never bothered to sign out of his Facebook, one of his crafty bastard friends must have opened up the internet on his phone and put that there. Whoever it was probably thought they were so bleeping clever. When he found out who did this, somebody was going to pay.

We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Prague-ramming (Okay, That One Was A Bit Of A Stretch)

Percy had always wanted to try real absinthe.  There was something about the idea of drinking absinthe that made Percy think of the artists and writers of days gone by; of Toulouse-Lautrec, of Oscar Wilde and especially of Ernest Hemingway, one of his favorite writers.  And so on his last night in Prague when he came across a cozy little place called, as if by fate, Hemingway Bar, that just so happened to serve the green fairy, Percy was enchanted.  Here was his chance to have a tiny little piece of the expatriate experience that he had heard so much about in his college literary classes; here was his chance to taste inspiration.  He waited patiently, watching each ice cold drop of water trickle over the carefully perched sugar cube into the chartreuse liquid below, savoring the moment.  He took a sip, expecting bliss, and then coughed, discreetly he hoped.  Why had nobody thought to ever tell him this stuff tasted like licorice?  Percy hated licorice.  Upon further investigation, he realized anise and fennel, two of his most hated seasonings, made up key ingredients of the spirit.  Percy took a deep breath and drank the rest of the absinthe and decided to move on to the rest of the cocktail menu instead, which looked delicious.  At any rate, he had tried something new, and he was pretty sure that Ernest Hemingway would have approved of his choice to drink rum or champagne, so long as he was drinking in general.  Overall, this vacation in Prague had been a smashing success; might as well spend the last night getting smashed.

I don’t normally promote things here (my audience is tiny anyway), but believe me when I tell you that Hemingway Bar in Prague has the best cocktails I have ever tasted.  Plus, it’s cozy and has great ambience, the bartenders are friendly and knowledgable, and it’s just great all around.  I love it.  We spent parts of three of our six nights in Prague here.  Seriously, you have to go there.  Do it!

The Czech Is In The Mail (This Is Hard. YOU Try Coming Up With Words Starting With “Prague.”)

Shopping for the perfect souvenir to take to certain people back home had, as usual, proven difficult, as Percy had never been great at gift-shopping to begin with.  Most of the stuff in these touristy shops was crap, and he didn’t want to bring home knick-knacks that would end up getting dusty on a shelf or thrown away in a few years time.  The things that did look nice in the not-quite-as-touristy shops were either too expensive and/or easily breakable, and he didn’t want to spend money on something that might be broken in his suitcase on the way home.  (Baggage handlers could never be trusted.)  Percy gravitated, as usual, to the ubiquitous wall of refrigerator magnets, but now he was faced with the tough decision of what to pick.  Which magnet would say “I’m too cheap to buy you a real present, but not so cheap that I didn’t bring you anything at all”?

The Prague-tologist Said To Turn Your Head And Cough

Percy wondered if the guards at Prague Castle liked their jobs or not.  It was probably an occupation that carried a lot of ceremonial importance, he thought, but he could see how having tourists take your picture every minute of every day could get old.  Did they feel objectified, or perhaps reduced to a novelty that people from other countries without working castles could never fully appreciate?  Did their knees get really stiff?  How much effort would it take to get them to break character and smile?  Like, let’s say a topless woman wearing bunny ears danced the Roger Rabbit in front of this guy, would that crack his steely exterior? Realizing that he was never going to get an answer to these questions, Percy supposed the only thing to do was to do the same thing as everybody else and get somebody to snap a photo.  As he continued with the rest of his castle tour, he hoped that behind the serious facade there was a man who liked to have fun and laugh once in a while.

Please Submit Your Prague-ress Reports By Friday

Percy had always believed deep down, that if he tried really, really, really hard he could fly.  Although he had always been told if you believe in yourself that you can do anything, he suspected that perhaps here, high up on the walls of Prague Castle, was not the best place to test out this theory.  Yes, he had just learned about the Second Defenestration of Prague, whereby someone had survived a 70-foot fall after being thrown out one of the castle windows, but he wasn’t sure he would be so lucky if his dreams of flying didn’t pan out.  Also, this drop looked like it might be more than 70 feet, and he was pretty sure dying would most likely ruin the view.