I’ve grumbled about Aramark’s efforts to go green in the past (it’s nothing personal, I just like my milkshakes), but I’ve got nothing but praise for these stylish new Grab & Go bags.  These customized Georgetown bags, made by EcoAction in conjunction with Aramark, are a great way to lessen the waste generated by plastic Grab & Go bags that are thrown out once you polish off your bland turkey sandwich, under-ripe banana and Lays potato chips.  Not only that, but they can be folded up and stored in that little pouch on the front of the bag!  Convenient, too!

Make sure you pick one up in Red Square this week.  EcoAction will be selling them for $4 from Tuesday to Friday, 11 am to 2 pm.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Cohn

When the new Qdoba at M and 33rd began offering half-price entrées to Georgetown students on Mondays, I knew it was only a matter of time before the Chipotle down the street would be forced to respond. But week after week went by and as Qdoba got busier and busier each Monday, Chipotle seemed to be acting under the premise that if they ignored this little annoyance, it would go away.

Well, not anymore. According to the employee who answered the phone when I called Chipotle to confirm earlier this evening, Chipotle will be giving out free burritos to Georgetown students and faculty all day tomorrow. In other words, it is so on.

Far from merely firing a warning shot across Qdoba’s bow, Chipotle seems to be looking to reassert its dominance in a big way. I’m not sure how the Burrito War is going to end—if these promotions will die out once the two restaurants reach a state of equilibrium or if there really isn’t room for the two of them on M St.—but nothing but good can come from such cutthroat competition. With the ball squarely in Qdoba’s court, I can’t wait to find out what’s coming next. Until then, I’ll see you all at Chipotle tomorrow.

Update 3/21 2:52 pm:  Is there anything better than a free Chipotle burrito?  How about a free Chipotle burrito along with a $5 Qdoba gift card?  That’s right, Qdoba has stationed an employee handing out free gift cards on the corner of 33rd and M, presumably to deter people from making it further down the block to the competition.  He gave me a card as I was walking to Chipotle and a dirty look as I was walking back with my Chipotle bag.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user greefus groinks

The Cinderella ad featuring JT III may have been tempting fate, but at least it doesn’t make me feel a little uncomfortable. That’s more than this Sheraton ad, specifically the Georgetown/Syracuse section (0:23-0:29), can say. I can’t imagine what the Sheraton executives were thinking when the approved this. Putting aside the bizarre nature of having someone you just met wipe away dressing from the side of your mouth, the Georgetown fan’s whole face was covered with dressing, so it’s not like there was any real purpose to the ‘Cuse fan’s tender action. Vaguely homoerotic, 100% disturbing, this ad never fails to give me the creeps when it comes on during timeouts in the NCAA tourney. Georgetown needs to do a better job of controlling how its image is used, specifically when it comes to ads like this one.

• In our cover story, Anna Bank writes about a college in D.C. that counts Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and outgoing Dean of Georgetown College Jane McAuliffe among its alums.  And you’ve probably never even heard of it.  Take a look inside Trinity Washington College.
• DPS officers are going to be packing a little more of a punch in a few days, Juliana Brint reports, and by punch, I mean mace and batons.  (Whoever can guess what the Ed Board thinks about this wins a big shiny penny.)
• In teenage relationships, the average time that the relationship lasts after sex is introduced is two weeks.  Or at least, that’s what Miss Wisconsin told Molly Redden during her Catholic high school’s abstinence-only sex ed.
• Their “bats are coming alive“: Hoya softball knocked off two on Tuesday and Wednesday, Tony Francavilla reports.
• Sonnet Gaertner spent the week taste-testing all the veggie burgers in the Georgetown area so you don’t have to.
• The Ed Board gives GUSA Pres Pat Dowd and VP James Kelly a tip of the hat and a wag of the finger, all in the same ed!  And they said it couldn’t be done!

Until next week, you know where to find it.

According to MSNBC, Davidson is paying for their students to go to the third round of the NCAA tournament in Detroit this weekend. This includes free transportation to the game, lodging, and tickets.

Would no one come to the game if they don’t do this? Georgetown student tickets are pretty hard to come by for the tournament unless you’re a season ticket holder. Yet still people find a way to get to the game which usually includes a cross-country road trip, sleeping on a questionable floor, and making nice with the scalpers. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Maybe I’m just jealous, but I think there’s something special about student initiative to go out of your way, on your own budget, to support your team. No matter how upset those Davidson kids are going to be if they lose on Friday, at least it won’t be on their own dime.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Somewhat Frank

For those looking to get their hallucinations on, the recently reopened Dixie Liquor is hosting an absinthe demonstration/tasting tomorrow from 4-7 p.m. As far as I can tell, or at least according to the New York Times, the absinthe they’ll be serving, Lucid, sounds pretty legit. The makers of Lucid managed to get around the U.S.’s ban on absinthe by omitting thujone, a chemical in modern absinthe, the Times says, which Lucid’s absinthe chemist claims wasn’t even a big part of old-school absinthe. From the Times:

Mr. Breaux knew that removing thujone entirely might harm the taste. “I had to get a handle on the whole thujone issue without compromising the character and the flavor of the drink,” he said. To accomplish this, Mr. Breaux blended the grand wormwood with green anise and sweet fennel from Europe, instead of using more-affordable imports from East Asia. Using herbs from Europe, absinthe’s native continent, he said, gives the drink an earthier essence.

Mr. Breaux also had to keep the American palate in mind while developing Lucid. “In the U.S., anise is a sort of a strange flavor,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of exposure to it.” So Mr. Breaux made sure that Lucid had a slightly cleaner, crisper taste than its European peers.

I’m not much for the flavor of anise, but if I were (and if I were 21), I’d probably be hitting this up tomorrow. Hallucinations aside, Lucid is 62% alcohol, so if you do end up going, watch out for yourself.

Photo courtesy www.drinklucid.com

Fresh off a victory over Gonzaga led by 40 points from sophomore Stephen Curry, the Davidson Wildcats will face Georgetown tomorrow afternoon in Raleigh. Mike Stewart tells you how the Hoyas plan to shut down Curry and more, over on the main site.

There may not have been 967 attendees, like Facebook had promised me, but no small number of people showed up today in Dupont Circle to take part in D.C.’s Pillow Fight 2008 (part of World Pillow Fight Day). That is, if you include not just those participating in the pillow fight, but also those just there to watch and the countless people there to document it with their video recorders and slick SLR cameras. (I, regrettably, am forced to count myself among this last group.)

When I arrived in Dupont Circle just after 2 p.m., people were milling about in clusters, awkwardly clutching their pillows. One of the organizers blew a whistle and the 50 or so people who had come to rumble gradually formed a mob on the northeast side of the circle, squinting their eyes and slamming away at each other. The participants ranged from young high schoolers to college students to self-consciously hip 20-somethings.

Some of the comments I heard from these hipsters regarding how uncool yet cool they were to be fighting with high schoolers: “I hope college is going to be this fun! We should organize it a pillow fight in college too! We could have it on the quad!” and “Is it illegal to hit a seventeen year-old girl with a pillow? I’ll ask Bill—he’s a lawyer.”

It wasn’t all fun and games, mind you. World Pillow Fight Day, part of the “urban playground movement,” according to their website, has loftier ambitions than that.

One of our goals is to make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously rejecting the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.

So it’s hip and socially conscious! Looks like the only ones losing out were the birds who donated all that lovely down.

Let’s hope, at least for John McCain’s sake, that being able to fill out a halfway-decent bracket isn’t a reliable indicator of presidential ability. According to an article from the Canadian Press, McCain has Kansas, Memphis, UNC and Connecticut in the Final Four, with UNC winning it all. For those who haven’t been keeping up with March Madness, the fourth-seeded Huskies were upset yesterday by a tenacious San Diego team, one of the two thirteen seeds to score a big upset yesterday. (Siena also knocked off a four seed in Vanderbilt.) Sorry, John.

Obama also made the safe (and boring, if you ask me) choice of UNC to win it all, with Kansas, UCLA, and Pittsburgh rounding out his Final Four. A fairly balanced slate—three one seeds and a four seed to spice things up. I think Obama’s onto something choosing Pitt, too. If the Fields-Young-Blair trio keeps playing like it has been in the past few games, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s prediction of some Final Four Panther-action turns out to be right.

Lastly, we have Bill Clinton, who sees Georgetown making it to the Final Four but no further. Clinton also chose North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA for the Final Four. “My heart’s with Georgetown,” he said, according to the Canadian Press article, “but my head tells me it’s going to be Carolina or Memphis.” A fair number of Hoya fans seem to share Clinton’s attitude, at least from what I’ve seen. They want Georgetown to win, but don’t believe it’s going to happen.

I’m not going to argue with those fans—Tyler Hansborough is indisputably a beast, Memphis is a squad to be reckoned with, etc.—but I will say this. Watching some of Georgetown’s sub-par performances (Big East final, anyone?), your head might be telling you that the Hoyas can’t go all the way. But if there was a time when you need to abandon the logic of your right brain for the fanhood of your left brain, now would be that time.  And if the first round taught us anything (two 12-13 match-ups in the round of 32?  really?), it’s that the most obvious choices aren’t always the right ones.