Tidal wave

Neither of these videos is likely to "ganhar a internet," as my Portuguese professor likes to say, but I still feel gratified public servicing it up here on Pipón. The first is a bit of Earth Day love c/o my ecologist spouse, kg. The second tackles another equally interesting, albeit comparably dispiriting, subject, the national debt. Admit it, you thought I was only interested in my fantasy baseball squad.

'Elites'

SAIS, however pompous the acronym, is not a household name outside foreign policy circles. The last time I saw it cross paths with the zeitgeist was in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, as Moore vilifies former Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, now a "distinguished visiting scholar" at SAIS, and the b-roll shows the Nitze building.

Last night, according to my friend Jeremy Wang-Iverson, brought some redemption. In an SNL skit mocking Sarah Palin, Tina Fey describes a new show, on the Sarah Palin Network, called "Elites" that "takes CSPAN footage of a bunch of smarty pants professors talking about who-knows-what and redubs it with the teacher's voice from Charlie Brown." Here, the b-roll, at minute 14:00, is once again good ol' SAIS.

Sushi Phi Epsilon

Not one of the sushi chefs behind the bar was actually Japanese. More bizarrely (stranger even than the recent addition of "Asian Cuisine," including pork fried rice and drunken noodles), on the menu, opposite a snooty discourse on when it is appropriate to drink sake cold (only super high quality bottles, apparently) is "Tono's Bomb," a $7 "traditional sake bomb" with Gekkeikan sake and your choice of Japanese beer. (I haven't had a sake bomb since a strange dinner at Kaya, in Cambridge, in the late 1990s.) But I'll say this: the sushi at Tono Sushi (2605 Connecticut Ave. NW) is good enough to make you forget about a menu that meanders into pan-Asian fraternity territory. For the non-adventurous, there's the super low-priced "roll combo," $10 for a cucumber roll, California roll and tuna roll. For everyone else, I recommend the spicy, crunchy salmon roll. We also sampled the Oshinko  ($4), an artfully presented platter of assorted Japanese pickles, and dreamed a little dream about one day ordering the Kimchee tuna roll and the tuna wrapped Dragon roll, stuffed with sweet potato tempura.