BETTY BOOP SPARE TIRE COVER

Hot, tired, and still half-drunk. I'll write a description at some point tomorrow.

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Okay, I’m sober, awake, and air-conditioned now. I’d heard about Brew at the Zoo but never been before. It’s a fundraising event the National Zoo hosts every summer where they bring in around thirty breweries to set up booths at the Zoo and give out samples of their beers. For the price of your ticket you get a nice glass mug with the Brew at the Zoo logo etched on it and all the free samples of beer you can drink in three hours.

There is a sample line etched on the mug and many of the brewers were strict/stingy about only filling your glass up to that mark. I did notice that the women in attendance generally were given more in their glasses than guys, probably because most of the people working the booths and pouring the beer were guys. The booths are arranged in a loop at the back end of the zoo and you just get a sample and then move to the line for the next and drink your beer while you wait to move up to the head of the line. Which means that it’s pretty much just continuous beer drinking for hours. Because your mug is only getting filled to sample size, it doesn’t seem like you’re drinking that much but it adds up quickly.

I was supposed to go with a couple friends, but something came up and they were unable to go so I had to fly solo. It’s an event that would be more fun with friends, but it was still pretty good on my own. They should’ve handed out a map though showing the different brewers’ booths and listing their beers because if you find one you enjoy and would like to buy at the store, it’s hard to remember what it was after trying so many different ones (not to mention the memory fog brought on by simply drinking so much beer). Of the ones I liked, there are only two that I can remember by brewery – a porter by Flying Dog and a hefeweizen from Starr Hill. They were both delish.

My only gripe about the event is that it’s held at the worst possible time of year. August in DC is like a summer vacation in Hell. It’s so hot and muggy that the entire city feels like one big outdoor sauna. They should push Brew at the Zoo back until September when the weather is less brutal. Especially given that you have to hump it back up the hill to the zoo entrance after the event ends. I can’t lie, I had to stop twice and take a break on a bench for a few minutes (whether from the beer I’d drunk or the oppressive heat I don’t know. Possibly both).

If I go again next year I think I’ll spring for the VIP ticket. Then they throw in a free t-shirt, appetizers, and you have your own private beer booths so you don’t have to wait in line. Plus you’re under an awning in case it rains. After all, you don’t want the rain watering down your beer.

(August 20, 2009)

Even under a thin, black shroud, the lines of a vintage '68 Volkswagen Beetle were unmistakable.
And when the cloth came off, at a bizarre unveiling ceremony Thursday at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment, it took work to be surprised by what was underneath it: an unprepossessing tan Beetle, with a sunroof, looking a little worse for wear with touches of rust, fading paint and a few missing pieces of metal trim.
The tires looked as if they still had a few thousand good miles in them. Inside the cab, the interior had that quintessential old Bug smell -- like burning latex -- as if the rubber flooring was always smoking a little from the heat underneath.
But this wasn't any Beetle. This was Ted Bundy's Beetle, the car into which he lured his victims and in which he killed many of them during a terrifying serial killing spree in the 1970s.

"This was kind of like a death wagon," said Wyndell C. Watkins Sr., a retired D.C. police deputy chief, who was on hand to help introduce the latest iconic celebrity murder object joining Washington's museum collections.

The car has been stored in a private collection owned by New York-based Arthur Nash, who owns many of the most grisly objects on display in the museum's main exhibition. Also from the Nash collection: clown and serial killer John Wayne Gacy's painter's box, on display in a room dealing with the unseemly "murderabilia" trade.