Dr. Reilling was my first dentist. Now I understand why his advice to me was always “brush-a-brush-a-brush-a.” It’s part of the song that Bucky Beaver sang to promote Ipana toothpaste. (Yes, Dr. Reilling was even older than me; I think Ipana was out of the market even then.) See a sampler of things for an image of Bucky and a link to an audio file (admittedly scratchy) of Bucky jingling.

Also via things magazine, Mark Z. Danielewski’s follow-up to House of Leaves is set to be released next month.

Via things magazine, the first seven lines of the Canterbury Tales, Flickrized.

Jenny Hogan writes:

Pluto is one of a new category of object to be known as ‘dwarf’ planets (which, not to be confusing, don’t fall under an umbrella term of ‘planets’, and must, by definition, be written with single quote marks around ‘dwarf’). These objects satisfy the other criteria, in being round and not a satellite. Ceres, which lies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is also now a ‘dwarf’ planet.

Laura Erickson remembers her Ph.D. advisor Gary Duke and explains her really interesting dissertation research.

While I was rehabbing birds in the late 80s and early 90s, I had started puzzling through why nighthawks have brown, messy, smelly droppings once a day, much different from normal bird droppings.

Shunning invasive procedures to get to the bottom of nighthawk digestion, Erickson and Duke radiographed three birds while barium-laced food traversed their entrails.

Although Zachary Schrag’s book doesn’t address the considerations that went into Metro having only tracks for local service (as opposed to, say, a third track for skip-stop service), it does remind us of the simple, descriptive, efficient names that architect Harry Weese and general manager Jackson Graham (ex-Army Corps of Engineers) intended for the stations:

a. Some names come naturally: Rosslyn, Pentagon, DuPont Circle [sic], Bethesda, Prince Georges Plaza.

b. Others indicate location by at least one coordinate: Backlick Road, Monroe Avenue, Georgia Avenue, Suitland Parkway.

c. We have used, where possible, traditional and/or colorful words (Foggy Bottom, Navy Yard) rather than mechanical terms (23rd and I St., N.W., 3rd and M, S.W.)

d. We have limited names to two words, preferably only one.

(Graham to Board, 8 January 1969, quoted in Schrag, pp. 255-256)

Schrag says that WMATA’s original policy, upheld for many years, was to limit station names to nineteen letters and spaces, thirteen for transfer stations. O tempora! O mores! Now we have capriciously punctuated mouthfuls like U St/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo and Vienna-Fairfax/GMU. Yeah, George Mason University is walking distance from the station, if you’ve got half an hour.

Schrag also tells a story almost too good to be true about how the big downtown transfer station got its name, the one that outlanders insist on calling just “Metro.”

…planner William Herman complained that the system’s main transfer station was badly named. He argued that “12th and G” was both confusing (several entrances would be on other streets) and too undistinguished for so important a station. Ever reasonable, Graham agreed to let Herman choose a better name. “I’ll let you know,” responded a relieved Herman. “No,” Graham explained, “I’ll give you twenty seconds.” Stunned, Herman blurted out the first words that came into his head: “Metro Center.” “Fine, that’s it, go on to the next one,” replied the general. And they did. (Schrag, p. 153)

“Nothing’s low to begin with.” Twenty-two lines from Nicholas Harp.

So the show that I just finished, The Gold Lunch, is a 12-minute monologue that comes at the end of an evening of shorter and longer one-acts. For an 8:00 curtain for the first show, I come on at about 10:25, but I like to get to the theater for the first curtain. So I spend a lot of time backstage. Survival tools: a fat collection of Raymond Chandler novels, an iPod loaded with all the episodes of David Terry and Michael Kraskin’s Catalogue of Ships, my water bottle, and (once the penultimate play—a version of Chekhov’s The Brute well-played for broad laughts—starts) lots of pacing back in the construction shop.

After the opening performance to a small house on Thursday, I had my doubts about how well the show would be received. But Friday’s house was with me from the second line, and that night I had one of those rare audience rushes—just everything was clicking, and all I had to do was tell the story.

Via DCist, another organization dedicated to linking Montgomery and P.G. County suburbs with light rail. See also the Inner Purple Line. My predeliction is for heavy rail, but I look at the twisty alignments that are being discussed, and I consider the graceful, older neighborhoods involved, and I begin to think that light rail is the better choice.

Compare the Anacostia light rail project in the District, for which ground has been broken (but, disturbingly, with little progress to report since 2004), and the Columbia Pike initiative in Arlington, in the planning stages.