Unfortunately for our 16^th president, it seems Edward Everett rose from the dead to pen the meandering script of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Yet judged by its base-heavy, slow-motion, blood-splattered trailer, Tim Burton’s newest movie looked just as epic as its title.

Stretch that minute and a half into an hour and a half, however, and the movie commits an error that Lincoln never would have. The president gave his Gettysburg Address in just two minutes, and director Timur Bekmambetov could take a lesson from him in brevity.

For what it delivers, Vampire Hunter is simply too long. Bekmambetov takes105 minutes to drag through a story that slashes historical accuracy as often as it does dead corpses—although neither of those two actions are unwelcome. If you expected Bekmambetov to stick to the historical record, I would refer you back to the movie’s title. And if you were looking for something other than silver-tipped shotgun/axe hybrids and fountains of scarlet blood, I would suggest someone other than Burton. But for the most part, that’s not what Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter presents.

Instead of an action-packed awesomefest of vampire slaying, the film takes us on Lincoln’s untold monomyth and bizarre coming-of-age story. Played by Benjamin Walker of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a strapping young Abe witnesses the horrors of American vampires from his first years growing up in the log cabin.

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D.C. is about as clueless as Ann Hathaway sporting a cerulean sweater in The Devil Wears Prada when it comes to ever-changing foodie trends. Even NPR declared, “cupcakes are so 2005”—and they said that two years ago.

Georgetown Cupcake may still attract hoards of tourists to their sickeningly sweet lair on M street, but chic pastry shops in New York and LA switched to serving macarons several years ago. The French confectionaries are devilishly hard to make, but when the meringue-based cookies come together with a sturdy ganache or buttercream, they’re worth all the fuss.

Deborah Kim and her husband Han have thankfully launched D.C. into the present with their new macaron shop on Wisconsin Avenue. The two met at the other CIA—New York’s Culinary Institute of America—where they learned all the skills to craft the delicate confectionaries.

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On Tuesday, the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor started its “Labor Lab” series by looking at justice–through tomatoes. Jennifer Luff, research director for the initiative, moderated the panel, which included Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland, and Greg Asbed and Gerardo Reyes, who represented the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

“For some people this seems like a bad time to talk about labor,” Luff commented, citing the economic downturn. But for the hundreds of thousands of tomato-pickers working the fields in Florida, the right time to talk about labor is long overdue.

In fact, despite the economic downturn, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has seen incredible progress in the recent months. “If I had made this talk a year ago,” said Estabrook, “it would have been a real downer—we’re looking at the worst labor abuse in this country, and in the last year something remarkable happened.” After a four-year boycott, the Coalition pressured Taco Bell into a signed agreement.

Estabrook, who started out as a food writer for Gourmet, happened upon the issue of food justice through his search to find more flavorful tomatoes amidst industrial agriculture. A quest that started out as purely culinary took a justice-oriented turn when Estabrook realized he hadn’t a clue who picked his food.

Delving into the food and labor politics of Florida—where the majority of off-season tomatoes are harvested—Estabrook felt “equal parts horror and shame.”

“These are the sweatshops of the field,” he remarked, “where basic labor practices pre-date the New Deal.” Workers suffered from continued exposure to pesticides, were bartered for on country roads, and are still paid by the piece.

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Photos by Max Blodgett

Kicking off the ”Future of Food” conference in Gaston Hall on Wednesday, Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, expressed his disappointment with the Washington Post-sponsored event.

“I wish more food industries were on the panel,” he said. “We want a dialogue, want to find areas of common ground, and, even if you don’t agree with us, you’ll find we serve a good lunch!”

Though Schlosser noticed the conspicuous absence of leading agro-business figures, attendees expressed far more excitement over the sustainability super-stars that were in attendence—most notably, His Royal Highness Prince Charles.

A pioneer in food sustainability, the Prince of Wales delved into the complex challenges facing public health, rural employment, environmental protection, and international food insecurity.

While the audience delighted in Prince Charles’ quip about “making embarrassing speeches about my eldest son during wedding receptions,” he gave the conference an air of seriousness, delivering a sober speech about the perils of continuing our dangerously unstable agricultural model.

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Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, spoke at Georgetown University yesterday about “Beyond DADT Repeal: The Future of the LGBTQ Rights Movement.”

The event, sponsored by the Georgetown University Lecture Fund, Georgetown Pride, and the LGBTQ Resource Center, attracted the attention of the conservative blog Catholic Campus Watch, which pronounced that the lecture “…spells out the sad reality that on many Catholic campuses, especially at Georgetown, perennial Catholic morality is often rejected, and the immoral agenda of the homosexual movement is welcomed.”

Despite Catholic Campus Watch’s opposition—and perhaps in part because of it—Solmonese’s lecture drew a large crowd to Copley Formal Lounge.

Solmonese praised Georgetown’s non-discrimination policy, as well as the LGBTQ Resource Center.

Addressing DADT’s repeal, Solmonese framed the discussion with a question: How can we make sense of LGBT victories when they are clearly long overdue? Reminding the audience of activists’ “empowered, strategic” responses to discriminatory policies, Solmonese argued that actions such as the repeal of DADT and the passage of the Matthew Shepherd Act still count as victories for the community.

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Pepco, Washington’s main power company and Georgetown’s electricity supplier, now ranks “near the bottom” in several surveys comparing power companies throughout the nation.

According to a Washington Post analysis, Pepco customers suffer through seventy percent more outages than those of other major companies. After finishing dead last in a 2008 study, Pepco simply stopped participating in the survey’s rankings.

As Georgetown and the D.C. area gear up for winter, Pepco’s reliability record proves troubling. During last year’s Snowmageddon, 98,000 Pepco customers lost power in an outage that took the company almost a week to resolve. In contrast, power company Dominion lost electricity to 105,000 customers, but responded by restoring power in just over a day.

Pepco’s regional president Thomas Graham told the Post that, “The number one commitment today at Pepco is to increase reliability,” the company continues to blame the real culprit behind their problems—trees.

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For a few lucky high school seniors ready to head off to college, failing grades that once marred their records have suddenly disappeared. Instead, students at West Potomac High School, just outside of Georgetown, have received “I”s on their transcripts.

The “incomplete” grade will replace any “F,” which allows students to complete unfinished work and raise failing grades without those nasty marks on their permanent report cards.

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Earlier this month, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, published an article that led many to believe that the Holy See had welcomed Springfield’s favorite family into its flock.

“The Simpsons are among the few TV programs for children in which Christian faith, religion, and questions about God are recurrent themes,” read the article, which cited an article written by Fr. Francesco Occhetta in Civilita Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine.

Georgetown’s own Fr. Christopher Steck embiggened the story on Twitter, writing, “Very flawed, and officially Catholic. Love it.”

Occhetta analyzed a 2005 episode titled, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star,” which aired shortly after Pope John Paul II‘s death. In the episode, Bart and Homer consider converting to Catholicism after meeting a priest voiced by Liam Neeson.

According to Occhetta, however, the L’Osservatore Romano’s article was more ill-conceived than a pigeon-rat.

“I wouldn’t say they’re Catholic, I would say they’re people of faith,” Occhetta told AFP. “I would say that the Simpsons are open on the question of God.”

Nonetheless, let’s not forget the Homer’s wise words about Catholic schools: “There, you don’t just get bad grades—you go to hell!”

A Georgetown senior, via Craigslist, has offered any misplaced Harbin residents a place to stay, if only to “take a nap” or hang out. Although the listing is posted in the “men seeking men” personals section, the author makes it clear that there’s “no pressure to do anything, per se.”

Let the Great Window Wars of 2010 begin.

For weeks, one Village A apartment has sported a life-sized cardboard cutout of Taylor Lautner wearing a Georgetown shirt on its window—presumably as a modest measure to cover those washboard abs. Not to be outdone by Team Jacob, however, Edward Cullen fans recently retaliated with a life-sized Robert Pattinson cutout sporting a Hoya Saxa shirt and a caption reading, “Jacob sucks!”

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