Bardcore musician Algal the Bard, who covers classic rock songs on medieval instruments, performed a lush, pitch-perfect cover of the R.E.M. song “Losing My Religion” on lute-guitar, an 8-string zither, recorder, and drums.
Losing my Religion – Bardcore (Medieval Style)
Capitol Hill Books, a popular and much-loved used neighborhood used bookstore, is altering its operations in response to the local outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
“Ever dream of having Capitol Hill Books all to yourself? Now you can,” the store tweeted on Monday morning.
Staff will be accepting one-hour bookings via email for no more than four customers at a time, allowing them to browse the shelves for an hour in an uncrowded store, free of cost, and “hopefully buy a lot of books,” says Kyle Burk, one of the owners of Capitol Hill Books.
“Yesterday we were going over all of our options and deciding whether we should shut down, and we were looking for ways to keep our employees with a paycheck and health insurance while this is happening,” Burk says. “It’s a perfect balance to strike, trying to come up with ideas that could still generate a little revenue but still keep everybody safe at the same time.”
As of the last official count on Monday, there were 17 total cases of COVID-19 in the District, and dozens more in Virginia and Maryland. In an effort to limit community spread, officials have been clamping down ever-tighter on events and businesses where infected people are likely to pass the virus on to others. Office workers across the region are working from home, Metro has altered its operating schedule, and Mayor Muriel Bowser has implemented stricter operating guidelines for bars and restaurants.
Burk says that business on Saturday was only slightly down from the usual, but by Sunday it had been cut in half. Still, they decided it wasn’t safe for customers or for their staff to be in a regularly-operating bookstore. Capitol Hill Books is known for its narrow passageways and its large stacks of paperbacks, sometimes necessitating that customers brush closely by one another to pass from one part of the store to another.
The store still has two employees working on site during operating hours, Burk says, and they will meet customers at the door with hand sanitizer and gloves before allowing them into the store, he says.
Since the store sent out its tweet about the new reservation policy, it’s already received several inquiries, per Burk. In addition to reservations, the store is selling rare books on its website and offering free shipping to anywhere in the U.S.
While the owners know it’s possible they’ll eventually have to close down completely as the city continues dealing with the outbreak, they’re doing everything possible now to ensure they’ll be able to keep themselves in business long term.
“I mean, look. It’s going to be rough,” Burk says. “You can imaging that your average used bookstore doesn’t have a huge stockpile of cash to continue operations without any revenue coming in for months on end.”
So far, he says, they haven’t had to cut employee hours (the store has five full time employees, including at its rare book warehouse in Hyattesville).
Burk bought the store from its old owner in 2018 with three of his best friends, Aaron Beckwith, Shantanu Malkar, and Matt Wixon. They all worked at the store on and off at various times, and it formed a core part of their social lives for more than 15 years. The four friends began planning to buy the store from owner Jim Toole, and managed to save up money with the help of money from Wixon’s moving company, Bookstore Movers. Wixon passed away from colon cancer in 2019, leaving behind a community of people at the bookstore that he’d loved.
“To say we’re dedicated to keeping this place open is a huge understatement. This is something we’ve been committed to. All the owners have been involved in this place for 15 years, even before we owned the store. We purchased the store particularly because we wanted to keep it alive—we think it’s an important part of the neighborhood and the community and it needs to be around as long as possible,” Burk says. “It’s a huge reason why we wake up in the morning. It’s a home for us and we’ll do our best to keep it here.”
This story has been updated to reflect that Capitol Hill Books has five full time employees, not six.
The post Capitol Hill Books Shifts To Private Appointments As Coronavirus Spreads appeared first on DCist.
Motion artist Fran Solo brought all sorts of real foods to life with his both happy and sad collection of animations. Animated oranges got squeezed, a frightened cinnamon twists were eaten, and a Jello mold did a little jiggle on Solo’s Instagram.
via Foodiggity
Host Joe Sabia of Vogue recently asked Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) 73 questions while taking an interesting tour of Zoolander’s “really, really ridiculously good-looking” apartment. Zoolander 2, the upcoming sequel to the 2001 comedy film Zoolander, is currently scheduled to release in theaters on February 12th, 2016.
It comes as no surprise that Derek Zoolander’s apartment is much larger than a center for ants. The international male supermodel gives us a tour of his luxe pad, all while revealing his favorite fashion trend of all time, the truth about his relationship with Hansel, the superpower he wishes he had, and the secret to becoming a model.
Instructables builders Robb Godshaw and wrdwise recently took on the standing desk phenomenon with a wooden treadmill desk shaped like a giant hamster wheel. The project requires four sheets of plywood, two skate wheels, two pipes, and 240 wood screws.
Rise up, sedentary sentients, and unleash that untapped potential within by marching endlessly towards a brilliant future of focused work. Step forward into a world of infinite potential, bounded only by the smooth arcs of a wheel. Step forward into the Hamster Wheel Standing Desk that will usher in a new era of unprecedented productivity.
image via Instructables
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
A reader writes:
Another reason why inactivity is an integral part of watching baseball was summed up by Robert Benchley: “One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him.” Watching baseball by yourself is entertaining only in proportion to your understanding of the subtleties of the game; but watching in a group or crowd inevitably turns into conversation, and it becomes the most convivial of spectator sports.
On that note, another sends the above video to defend the sport’s stasis:
At 300 feet away from the batter and the pitcher, you can have this interaction with the right fielder.
Another reader:
Here’s something that drives me crazy when people complain that there’s too much inactivity in baseball, and that it is thus boring. There are far fewer “time outs” than people realize, especially when there are runners on base. When the catcher tosses the ball back to the pitcher? Time’s in. If the catcher overthrows the pitcher, or throws it back too slowly, or the pitcher drops the ball, the runners will advance. When the pitcher is looking in at the catcher to get the sign? The runners can take off. If there’s a runner on second and the third baseman is playing too far from the bag to cover a throw from the catcher? Again, there goes the runner.
And all the while, infielders are shifting from one spot to another, to induce the runner to take too big a lead so that he can be picked off, or to hold him closer to the bag. Plus, the batter and runners take signs from the third base coach that are flashed too quickly for spectators to take notice, and the pitcher and catcher are changing sign sequences to keep their communications secret, often with instructions from the dugout.
Nothing going on? Bullshit.
Another:
Lowen Liu asks, ”What other sport teases your attention in this way, dares you to look away, to yawn … ?” The answer is professional football.
There is almost 60% more action in a three-hour baseball game than a three-hour football game. According to a Wall Street Journal study of four games from week 16, the average NFL game features just 10 minutes 43 seconds of action. Commercials account for nearly 60 minutes of the three-hour affair. And when the networks are showing the game, the bulk of the time is spent either on replays or shots of players huddling, in pre-snap formations or “milling about.”
Another adds:
Sometimes the NFL game clock continues counting down while bunches of players or referees get together to have a chat. And then in a close game, just when the drama should be at its peak, the offensive team with a lead (and sometimes even a narrowly trailing team with the ball) is given an incentive to stand around doing nothing for half a minute every time it starts a play to run down the clock. Stand around, stand around, wait, count 35 seconds, then snap! And then 22 men spend 10 seconds sprinting maybe 40 feet each. Usually less. Then walk around a bit, get back in line, and wait for it, wait for it, have we counted to 35 yet? And repeat.
Ugh.
As a born-and-bred Midwesterner, I never questioned the constant action of the game my family watched every Sunday … until I caught games from the 1998 World Cup on TV. When the NFL season began a few weeks later, I couldn’t stop noticing, and being hopelessly bored by, the long stretches of nothingness that actually characterize the American game. Not that I became some huge soccer fan, but American football, with its endless committee meetings and appellate court proceedings and “athletes” who often play only a few dozen seconds per week, quickly became too boring for me to watch. When I kept a stopwatch of actual game-playing action a decade or so ago, I kept coming up with a figure of about 1/8, or about 88% downtime.
Don’t get me wrong – a football game is great background noise for a party. But to sit down and spend three hours paying attention? Give me a baseball game any time, or hockey, or even, yes, the one-and-a-half soccer games that can be played in the same span.
Another looks to another sport:
Lowen Liu claims that part of the beauty of baseball is the down time. So I guess Test Match Cricket, played over five days; with meal, drinks and sleep breaks in between; where attending any one day of play does not guarantee you will see all the players on the field (or even see the match reach a conclusion); and a two-hour nap wouldn’t matter a jot; then Test Match cricket must be THE beautiful game!
Of course the five-day limit is a modern adjustment – they used to play on until there was a winner. In Durban 1939, England played South Africa for ten days, until they were forced to call it a draw because the ship was leaving to take the England team back home! Now there’s a game with down time …
