"Marion Barry was many things to many people — joa hero, a scoundrel, a deeply flawed but ultimately admirable man, a tragic figure who snorted and screwed away his great potential."

"But for me, as a news- and politics-obsessed kid growing up in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, Barry was first and foremost the greatest show on earth. So, while Barry’s death at the age of 78 is occasioning any number of tributes, condemnations, and assessments of the four-term mayor, I’d prefer to remember him as I originally encountered him: a spectacle."

100 years ago today: "Arthur Eldred, a 17-year-old Boy Scout from Long Island, became the first person to earn the Eagle Scout rank."

"Eldred's initial accomplishment was to complete the requirements for the rank of Eagle Scout only six months after that supreme award in American scouting was announced in April 1912." 

The leaders of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), assuming it would take several years for any boy to earn the required 21 merit badges, hadn't yet devised a final review system for Eagle candidates; they hadn't even settled on a design for the medal....

Out of the more than 115 million boys who have passed through the Boy Scouts of America in the last 102 years, approximately two million have become Eagle Scouts, a 2% rate that has climbed to about 4% of all scouts in recent years....

Many went on to notable careers and distinguished service to the country. The list of famous Eagles over the last century includes movie and television stars, six Medal of Honor recipients, Nobel Prize winners, novelists, a number of astronauts (including most Shuttle astronauts), Tuskegee airmen and Japanese-American internees, congressmen, senators and governors, an endless number of corporate CEOs and university presidents, a U.S. president (Gerald Ford), and the first man to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong). But there are other, perhaps less obvious, Eagles as well: sexologist Alfred Kinsley, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Washington's disgraced ex-mayor Marion Barry....

Cognac, again.

A while back, I had a post about Cognac, provoked by this post in which Tonya razzed me for ordering a cognac and said: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ('The bitch set me up!') Barry." But I've got to do some more cognac-blogging after reading this article in the Business section of today's NYT about Navan, the vanilla-flavored cognac put out by the same company that makes Grand Marnier, the great orange-flavored cognac. The article begins this way:

JUDGING from its prodigious intake of Cognac, the hip-hop generation doesn't seem to share the White House's antipathy toward France. Inspired by the lyrical tributes of rappers from Nas to Ghostface Killah to Busta Rhymes - the last of whom penned the 2002 hit "Pass the Courvoisier" - young urban consumers have taken a shine to the drink. They are largely responsible for its stellar American sales, which climbed 13.8 percent from 2001 to 2003, according to the Adams Beverage Group. ... The rap duo OutKast had this to say about it in the 1998 song "Mamacita": "To the front, to the back, there's Cognac/Got my throat burnin' like burlap."

Well, maybe there are hugely popular rap songs--I wouldn't know--about the Margaritas and Cosmopolitans the rest of you were drinking that night, but if not, I am going to rely on this New York Times business news article as a mark of coolness.

Cognac.

I laughed a long, long time at this, from Tonya's post about Thursday's dinner with Nina, Jeremy, and me:

I also learned a few interesting things about the other bloggers. First, the other bloggers like to have a good time. They are my kind of people because I am always, always, always down for having a good time. Second, Ann drinks cognac. I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ("The bitch set me up!") Barry.

Tonya surmises that I have little else in common with Mayor Barry. Probably Barry would have stayed with the group if it started out going out to dinner in an expensive restaurant and then decided to top off the night by going dancing in a club that was playing hip-hop music. I, however, defected.

As to drinking cognac: it was after dinner. We had gone to a bar to kill some time waiting for the club to open. The others ordered Cosmopolitans and Margueritas, which seems just crazy to me. Those are cocktails. Why would you order that after dinner? I find that weird. Tonya finds it weird that anyone ever drinks cognac. Oh, well. Perhaps all can agree "The bitch set me up" will be funny forever.