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I’ve had people call me a “kike” at parties; I’ve been told to “go back to Jerusalem” by homeless guys in San Francisco; and I’ve had co-workers make Holocaust jokes to my face

But this sort of “mild” anti-Semitism (is there such thing as “mild” hate?) has never been a major problem since I tend to chill with open-minded people who are not bigots.

Still, what I wouldn’t give to figure out how to get 1.21 jigowatts of electricity into my flux capacitor so I could go back in time to last Saturday night.

Several friends and I got together at Asylum that night for their 25-cent High Lifes. We had spotted some guy earlier that evening flailing around the biker bar like some ADHD case on Red Bull auditioning for “So You Think You Can Suck At Dancing”. He provided mild entertainment but was otherwise a speck on the windshield of my evening.

Until I left.

Foregoing cheap drafts to watch a boxing match at a friend’s house, I left Asylum around 9pm after which Dancing Guy came to our table and became Heebophobe and All-Around Racist. This prompted our friend Banjo to explain something. With his fist.

Banjo, who is not a Member of the Tribe (MOT) but is now an honorary one in my book, reached across the table and punched the Jew-hater. In the face.

Here is the explanation as provided by my friend Klein during a GChat this morning, edited for brevity, anonymity, and decency:

Klein: [Anti-Semite] came over to our table and sat down
and I have no idea what he was saying there
because I was out with Banjo smoking
and then when I got back he was there
and people looked like they didn’t want him there
I went to the bathroom
when I came back a minute later all the guys were gone
and I was like, “Um, where is everyone?”
and they said “Banjo and that guy got into a fight!”
told me later that the guy, while at the table, was just being weird
they asked where he was from
and he said “Tel Aviv! Haifa! Jerusalem!”
and they said, “Oh, you’re Jewish?”
and he said, “FUCK NO!!!! FUCK YOU!!!”
that’s all I heard about the table conversation

Arjewtino: man

Klein: so, now I’m back from the bathroom
I see the blond bartender walking the crazy guy out of the bar
I follow behind
Banjo and are half way down the street
the guy sees Banjo and starts walking towards him screaming
“YOU BIG NOSE JEW! YOU POTATO [N-WORD]!”

Arjewtino: OH. MY. GOD

Klein: Banjo is behind me screaming at the guy
I’m in front of the guy, shoving him in the chest
pushing him back from Banjo
he keeps screaming racial epithets
Banjo is screaming back
Runjit comes over and starts helping me corral the guy
this goes on for a minute
then two cops come over
Banjo and Shiftless Badger disappear
one cop pulls the guy over and is like, “Ok, calm down. What happened?”
the guy says that Banjo sucker-punched him
the other cop is standing off on the side laughing hysterically at the situation
the cop talking to the guy says, “Look. It is WAY TOO EARLY FOR THIS. Just go home. everything’s fine now.”
at this point, Runjit and I thank the cops and leave
we call Shiftless Badger and Banjo to find them

Arjewtino: damn, what a night

Klein: and SB is like “Uh, we’re hiding in an ally.”
Banjo don’t dig cops
oh, another thing the crazy guy was saying was that he was a “pure blood Spaniard.”
Now, Banjo and I had pointed this guy out earlier because he was clearly, from 6 pm on, the drunkest.guy.at.the.bar.

Arjewtino: yeah, I remember him

Klein: right
so, it was interesting times

Arjewtino: I can’t believe I missed a fight with an anti-Semite

Klein: Heather was, apparently, REALLY MAD

Arjewtino: I would have loved to have decked him

Klein: well, I’m upset that I missed the actual FIGHT

Arjewtino: I know, fucking bladder

Klein: Seriously

Arjewtino: You’re like a schoolgirl

Klein: my left arm sez otherwise
My right arm is a bit more school girlish

There might still be time for me to go back in time to relive this fight. A night in jail, to me, would have been totally worth it.

There is a long list of things I won’t do, among them:

• Attend a baby shower
• Eat coconut
• Comment on people’s new haircuts

But one of the top things on this list of personal policies is:

• Attend a Renaissance Festival

It’s not like I was ever traumatized by a knight as a child or beaten by a big-busted wench. I just hate renaissance festivals. I don’t think this really needs a reason. But hanging out with a bunch of dorks who dress up as 16th-century English villagers, speak with fake cockney accents, and pretend to actually be ale-swilling, sword-fighting Tudors makes me want to hurl in the privy.

So when I found myself at the Maryland Renaissance Festival on Sunday afternoon, bribed into attending by The Princess and her friends Cagey and Rory, I made sure to enjoy it as little as possible. And I failed.

The truth was, it didn’t suck. I won’t say I liked it or that I’d go back next year, but it definitely didn’t suck balls. And here’s why:

Credit

1. Cleavage

Though I hate the costumes of whatever ridiculous era revelers are trying to emulate, seeing most women wearing breast-endowing corsets is easily the best part of attending these nerdfests. Sure, I don’t need to see women who are well past the age of expectancy from 500 years ago squeezing into these lung-crunchers, but most chicks’ ample bosoms and cut-off Daisy Dukes made for nice eye candy and didn’t make me want to joust myself.

2. Nerdfest

Speaking of nerds, the MRF attracts some of the least socially accepted dregs of society. If you’re an outcast at your school, picked on by even your own parents, or generally reviled by the outside world, you will find acceptance and love here. All you need is a costume with a fake sword, pantaloons, and a funny hat and you’ll be the coolest kid in the realm.

3. Feats of strength

If you want to impress your date and feel like a man’s man, go for the festival games that test a man’s testosterone count. Just make sure you succeed. Though adept at knife-throwing and dart-tossing, I eschewed the battle axe hurling and wench dousing games to test my strength on Thor’s Hammer. I pounded that fucking lever like it was a Guatemalan trying to steal my wallet four times but not once came close to making the top bell ring. As I left, humiliated and sure The Princess wouldn’t be putting out that night, the guy running the game looked at me and said, in his best Poindexter voice, “Go back to your keyboard.”

4. Cute kids

Nothing gets a chick’s uterus jumping more than seeing photogenic children acting all adorable and shit. Even I found these little fucking imps to be endearing. Between dressing up as fairies, scaling the climbing wall, or running after bubbles, these pip-squeaks are not the most detestable people you’ll ever see and might restore your faith in humanity.

5. Meat on sticks

Have you ever wanted to walk around like Henry VIII eating a huge turkey leg? Me, too! Between the meats on sticks, fried macaroni and cheese, and ice cream, the food at MRF was reasonably priced and enough to make you feel like a royal glutton. It was, besides The Princess paying my $17 entry fee, one of the few reasons I agreed to attend.

6. It only happens once a year

So the Princess can’t make me go again. Take back Sunday! It’s ManDay.

A few weeks after meeting Perez Hilton, my friends the It Girls (MJ and HC) were once again in rarefied air on Friday night as they partied with — and were propositioned by — Vanilla Ice.

Ice was in town for a show at McFadden’s, a bar in Georgetown’s east end. Though I was invited to go, images of my brother dancing to “Ice, Ice Baby” when he was 5-years-old made me decline.

Here’s MJ’s rendition of her night with Robert Matthew Van Winkle:

After he sung at the bar he came and hung out with us. We totally charmed his tour manager… he invited us out with them afterwards… and we go, “Well, where are you going?” And he goes, “Back to the hotel.” And HC goes, “What are you doing there?” And he says, “Fucking!”

We said, “Oh, no, sorry, but those girls over there might.” And he goes, “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d come, but it was worth a shot.” We totally turned down Ice’s entourage.

But he was so nice. He was really funny, loved to sing to every song, had a mic he carried around all night. Gave everyone free shots, free drinks. Took tons of pictures with us. And Pat goes to him, “Dude, I and he’s got nothing on you.” And Ice is like, “Yeah!”, laughed and found Pat hysterical. It was so much fun and I danced all night.

I love the idea that MJ and HC turned down a potential threesome with Vanilla Ice.

Here are more photos of Vanilla Ice hanging out with my friends his new friends:

Ice showing Pat what a bottle of Jagermeister looks like

Ice showing off his tattooed knuckles to Pat and Chosang

“Threesome, ladies?” MJ, Nancy, Ice, and HC

Brewies Chewies tries to get in on a threesome with Ice and HC

While coming back to our 8th-floor office from an early morning coffee break yesterday, six of my co-workers and I took the elevator.

As a practical joke at the expense of the four female co-workers, my friend Mamilad looked at me and our other male colleague and said, “Ok, ready? One, two, three…”, at which point the three of us instinctively jumped in the air and landed with a thud.

Which tilted the elevator.

Which stopped it from running.

Which shut it down. For good.

We pressed every button. Nothing. We used our security cards. Nothing. We smacked the doors. Nothing. We pointed fingers at each other.

The elevator was stuck on the 4th floor, halfway up our otherwise 20-second trip and stubbornly unable to operate.

I pressed the red button, which made the alarm sound. After a few seconds, security came on and asked what was going on.

“We’re stuck in here.”

“Is everyone ok?”

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

“We’ll get you out soon.”

Being stuck in an elevator can do weird things to you. You imagine how long you might be there. You wonder whether you’ll have to crawl through the doors and onto a landing like Keanu Reeves did in Speed. You blame the three guys who thought it’d be funny to jump up and down.

What you don’t do, though, is panic.

For the next 20 minutes of our “ordeal”, the seven of us sat on the floor of the elevator and talked about the following things:

• Other co-workers’ attitudes
• Other co-workers’ odors
• Possible drinking games we can play while waiting
• How many firefighters will break down the doors to rescue us
• Whether we can get the rest of the day off because we’re “just too shaken up to work”
• Who will be the first to hyperventilate
• Climbing through the elevator’s ceiling
• Using physics to determine how fast the elevator would go if it went into a free-fall
• Agreeing that if we jumped a second before impact we’d survive unscathed
• Who we’d eat first if we ended up stuck in there for weeks

This last item was met by a unanimous decision that Cam, a small Vietnamese chick, would be the first to be cannibalized.

“Why?” she asked, incredulous at our collective agreement of her fate.

“Because you’d probably be the tastiest.”

“No way, man, I have my period.”

“We’ll eat around that area.”

Luckily, 10 seconds after this last comment that completely grossed out me and the other two guys, the elevator moved. We pressed the first-floor button and started laughing with relief.

The doors opened at the ground level and we were met by no one.

No firefighters. No security. Just the lobby welcoming us anti-climactically.

“I can’t believe it took us less than 20 minutes to discuss who we’d eat first,” Mamilad said.

“I know,” I said, “even the Uruguayan ruby team that crashed into the Andes waited a few weeks before feasting on each other.”

Report card day always brought a sense of dread when I didn’t receive good grades. I would conspire with my Hermanita to not tell our mom about her report card, using physical threats or monetary bribes to convince her.

None of that was necessary Friday night as we celebrated the end of summer by holding a Back to School Blogger Happy Hour at Madhatters. No straight A’s on this proverbial report card, but a pretty good GPA:

Baby Bien brought one of the three $25 gift certificates to Madhatters that we won the previous week on their trivia night. He cheated by texting our friend to look up a few answers on the Google: C+

INPY met me early for pre-gaming and shots of SoCo and lime. Later in the evening, we punched each other in the face and then made up over a manly series of masculine, totally heterosexual “I love you, man”s: B

GoPats and J-Vo brought Brajewlian, my Brazilian-Jew doppelganger, and his wife Jess, both of whom I hadn’t seen in years. Brajewlian didn’t rub in his country’s 3-0 defeat of my country in last month’s Copa America: A+

reminded me of my notoriously bad memory when I drink. He said something else I couldn’t remember: B

showed up early and was one of the only bloggers to have a sober conversation with me before the shots started. Not sure if that’s a good thing: A-

, in her first gig as a co-host, showed up to the bar early and wore a sexy argyle sweater-vest that was consistent with the happy hour theme. No Catholic schoolgirl skirt, though: A

Collateral Damage made true on her promise to buy me a fanny pack and brought my long-awaited present. She also brought her old school Polaroid camera but yelled at me for shaking the photo she snapped: A

Starting Today bought me a beer with someone else’s money and made out with a girl: A+

Boztopia let me call him Boz, which I think is awesome, and reminded me of outdated 80s action heroes: A-

continued to insist the Arizona Diamondbacks would win the NL West (over the Dodgers). I told him if they did, I’d hunt him down and punch him in the throat: D

Sexy old school bloggers Kassy K, , Sparkle Pirate, and Circle V brought some tradition to the event, bringing back memories for many of past happy hours and good times. Also, Kassy K and DC Cookie hung out late night with some strippers: A

showed up really late, ignored many text messages, and wore a skinny black tie that looked better on him than most waiters. We argued over who would pull more women if we were competing and he insisted he would. Poor, misguided friend: C

Listen to Leon, a blogger I had wanted to meet for a while, might be my personality twin: B+

HAL, who recently convinced me I may not hate the Yankees, didn’t remind me of New York’s better record than the Dodgers: B+

I managed to talk to and That’s What She Said without offending either of them. I think: B

, Hey Pretty, and stole my lunch money but couldn’t stuff me in my locker: D+

Sisco came late and bought me a tequila shot, which might have contributed to my late-night hallucinations: B

is a blogger I met that night who may have the best blog name I have ever heard: A

Hot Sox Bartender was there even though she wasn’t working and promptly reminded me that thinking I don’t hate the Yankees anymore makes me a pussy: A

, an early 50/50 at coming, made an exalted appearance that quickly devolved in making fun of each other. About what? I don’t remember: B+

I gave a REALLY hard time for falling off of the face of the blog world. Then she reminded me that I flaked on her birthday party: B-

, one of the first bloggers I ever met, unfortunately left Mini-Red at home, using some excuse about the bar not allowing 9-years-old or something: C+

Joe Logon, who I hadn’t seen since March’s Shamrock Fest, didn’t make any height jokes: B

DC Blogs, who will be announcing some changes to his site soon, showed up but left before I was able to buy him a promised beer: B

By my calculations, that is an overall GPA of 3.05, which is higher than most of my semesters in college. Another outstanding blogger happy hour, great to see so many of you and meet you newbies. If I forgot anyone (quiet, WiB), let me know and I’ll give you a grade.

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Hikers scale boulders at Great Falls

The Princess and I spent Labor Day communing with motherfuckin’ nature and hiking through Greats Falls. Because my friends like to be mentioned on my blog, I’ll tell you we went with (in order of longest I’ve known them) B-Fab, Dr. Vargas DDS, Cagey, and Average Jane.

There are a lot of people in DC who have never heard of Great Falls. I don’t know how you live here and not know about this place. I’d call you a certain name implying mental retardation, but The Princess doesn’t like that word, so I’ll just call you a rucking fetard.

Great Falls is a national park site popular with kayakers, hikers, and tourists with teenagers who whine about walking in their flip flops. And since I hate jogging or lifting weights but love feeling like a grizzly bear, we went to the Maryland side of the Falls on Monday.

About a third of the way through the first leg of the Billy Goat trail, I spotted a path that led down to the Potomac. I led my troop through bushes and found a beach clearing, where we saw four underwear-clad people had swam across to the Virginia side.

I suggested everyone strip and jump in the water. The girls were happy just dipping their toes in the tadpole-infested water. But I, infused with the heart of an insane Orca, undressed to my underwear.

I took off my clothes as The Princess whistled and cat-called. I jumped in the river. It felt amazingly refreshing and warm and reminded me of swimming in Lago Atitlán in Guatemala.

The Princess warned me about the deceptive dangers of river currents, having grown up in the Midwest and seeing first-hand the power of the mighty Missouri River. I scoffed and stubbornly started to swim hard to the other side, a distance I estimated at about 17 miles.

Why do I jump into bacteria-infested waters? I cannon-balled into the C&O Canal in Georgetown several years ago when I lost a one-sided bet to Tits McGee. It took three showers to get the stink off. It must be a sick desire to conquer the elements. Or just a sickness.

I landed on the rocks of Virginia panting and gasping for breath. I looked back to Maryland and saw my friends yelling for me to come back. I rested for a few minutes, then jumped off a rock and started back toward the Old Line State.

Shit, I realized after a few seconds, this current is tougher than it looks. The Nation’s River pushed me downstream as I fought to stay on a straight line to shore. Great, I’m going to drown in my fucking underwear, I thought.

I flipped over and swam on my back, kicking the waters with my feet. After a few seconds, I looked up and saw that I was swimming in place like a stranded buoy.

When do men summon their strength in times of need? When women are watching.

I turned on to my stomach and beat down on the waves with my arms, pushing myself against the devouring current and slashing through the river as fast as I could. I landed on a mossy Maryland boulder unable to breathe yet proud I survived the mammoth waters.

“Is your skin bubbling today?” AJ asked me yesterday over e-mail. “Did you have diarrhea last night?”

No, I told her, adding: “Maybe instead of infecting me, the river gave me superhuman strength, much like the radioactive spider gave Peter Parker his powers. Maybe I’m now a superhero.”

Yes, a superhero. You may call me Potomac Man.

“When we first met, I thought you were a jerk.”

It’s Saturday night and I’m celebrating the end of the softball season with my team at Cue Bar. My teammate Vu has sprung this nugget of information on me. She’s had a few glasses of “liquid courage”.

“What?” I exclaim. “Why?”

This is not the first time I made a bad first impression. Some people just don’t like me. Even my best friend Blue, who I met in third grade at , couldn’t stand me when we first met as 8-year-olds. In his words, I “ran around too much” during recess and “couldn’t keep still”. Twenty-four years later, he’s still the guy I’d call to bail me out of jail.

“No,” Vu continued, “I mean, when I first met you I thought you were a jerk but now I know you’re not.”

We all know the importance of good first impressions. I, apparently, don’t give them. Sometimes my reputation even beats me to it. Eight years ago, a co-worker who joined the newspaper I worked at thought I was a snob before she even met me. She told me this during a work happy hour. When I asked her why, she explained it was because I was from LA.

There are a lot of reasons, I think, why people don’t like me upon meeting me.

• I come across as arrogant.
• I correct people’s grammar (sorry, Tits McGee, but I was implying something, not inferring it).
• I’m not from the east coast.

We all make these pre-judgments –- of people, of places, and of things. That’s actually the ironic thing. We place so much emphasis on first impressions yet are so often mistaken down the road.

For instance, this flash advertisement popped up recently on some web site I was visiting:

My initial thought was, “Nice. Just a couple of lesbian women who enjoy hugging.” A few seconds later, exactly what the advertisement was about became clear:

Oops.

But it happens all the time. Our brains are just trying to simplify an already complex world by breaking it down into readily understood parts. The brain’s act of generalizing explains stereotyping and why some people liked the movie “Fever Pitch”.

Back to Saturday night — Vu assured me she didn’t think I was a jerk. I told her it was ok, that I can be sometimes, but I was glad she and I had become friends. She smiled and turned around.

That’s when I snapped a picture of her ass.

Photo credit: Chosang

When I called my friend MJ last Friday night to invite her out, she told me she and HC were busy.

“We’re going to Clarendon Ballroom to meet Perez Hilton,” she said in my voicemail.

Clarendon where? Perez who? Oh right, that gossip blogger who built his career on smarmy and often cruel comments about celebrities.

That’s what MJ said anyways. But this is what I heard: “There are other bloggers more important than you who I’d rather hang out with.”

Perez Hilton, aka Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., is kind of a big deal in celebrity blogging. He has the 16th-ranked blog in the Technorati universe (for comparison’s sake, mine is ranked awesomely at 49,721st), gets about a gazillion hits a day, and was dubbed “Hollywood’s Most Hated Web Site”. If you’ve never heard of him, welcome to the Internet. There’s a lot of porn here.

Perez came to DC last week as a guest of Hot 99.5 radio station for something called the Lil’ Black Dress Party, an event big enough to wrestle my friends’ attention away from, well, me. Even the covered it for some reason.

“Seriously, we felt like celebs,” MJ told me yesterday over e-mail while recapping the night. “They had a red carpet and were taking pictures inside. So we’re on the radio station website. It was fantastic.”

That night, while she and HC partied in Virginia, I rode the 42 Metrobus thinking about Perez and thought, How does a blogger become a celebrity? How do his nights out become “events”? Should I start announcing my social calendar on my blog?

Perez’s celebrity status was cemented for me when MJ sent me this text later that night, at 12:43 a.m.: “I just got a pic w/ perez!” I texted her back: “Loser.”

Celebrity blogging can be attained. It’s just a matter of figuring out what the celebrities do right and comparing that behavior to your own. So I did some side-by-side assessments of Perez and myself to determine if I was on my way to becoming a blogger celebrity, too:

Be Latino

Perez Hilton is Cuban. I’m Argentinean. Everyone knows Latinos are awesome (even Guatemalans who ). But I’m Jewish, too, which makes me better than him.

Have blog haters

People hate Perez. They visit his blog EVERY day to tell him that. Everyone loves me, though. That’s what my mommy told me.

Have a distinctive look

Perez inexplicably dyes his hair blondish, wears thick glasses, and shows off oddly patterned shirts that don’t match his ties (see photo above). I have a skinny black tie I still bust out that reminds people of Flock of Seagulls.

Have an attention-grabbing site banner

Be gay

Perez is a ‘mo who exploits his sexuality to befriend female celebrities. I’m a straight man who thinks about many different women naked every day. Hmm. Might have to work on that one.

Be rich

Perez charges exorbitant fees for ads on his blogs because his site traffic demands it and advertisers are willing to pay for it. Though my blog is ad-free, I am still waiting for the or the 1 million Euro check from Spain to come in.

Post lots of photos

Perez posts photos of celebrities with “clever” captions that he doodles. I post photos of LNS celebrities with my own “clever” captions that I take an entire 5 seconds to come up with.

In general, just act like an unapologetic prick

Perez outs gay celebrities like Lance Bass, prints paparazzi photos without permission, and has a selective memory to accommodate his agenda. I my friend’s fragile fingers, print my friends’ embarrassing stories without permission, and have a selective memory to accommodate my agenda.

According to this comprehensive list, I have already achieved celebrity blogger status. The day will soon come when new “It” girls MJ and HC forsake a night out with Perez Hilton to come meet me in some Virginia bar.

And maybe they’ll send him this text: “I just got a pic w/ arjewtino!”

I’m on the Metro train, end of the day. My Express crossword is finished. My book, An African in Greenland, doesn’t have enough pretty pictures to entertain me. I need to be entertained. I must be entertained on this hour-long commute. This is when I play a game called “One-Sided Eavesdropping”.

Much like Garfield would be funny if you took out the strip’s dialogue, eavesdropping is much more fun when you can only hear one side of the conversation. It leads to incongruous segues and mystifying comments.

Earlier this week, I could not help but listen to some dude guy talking to his friend while on the Orange Line:

Dude Guy: I usually get motion sick when I ride backwards.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It’s usually when I’m reading or playing poker on my phone.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It used to be worse when I was a kid and I’d throw up.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: Which one are you talking about? The hot one? She wasn’t there last week.

DG’s friend: …

Dude Guy: It would have come in handy since I have a dog.

I’m actually happy I couldn’t hear Dude Guy’s friend’s meek voice, it made for a more entertaining conversation.

When the Nats open up the 2008 baseball season, they’ll be playing in a stadium that looks something like this:

Eight months before this artist’s rendition becomes a reality, though, I decided on Saturday to stop by the stadium construction site for a sneak peak. And I got to see more than I expected.

Walking down Half St, south of M St in Southeast, I saw the purple-blue seats of the Nats’ new 41,000-seat arena. I approached the stadium and saw backhoes lining the street and trash littering the gutted sidewalks.

I spotted some construction workers milling about and could hear the hum of machinery coming from the hollowed center of the stadium. I walked around the left-field stands with my camera, slightly disappointed with the lack of exciting images.

The thought of trespassing entered my mind. There aren’t any signs telling me not to enter, I rationalized. So, armed with the courage of knowing my chances of getting arrested were slim, I walked across the sandy gutters and into the stadium.

I was surprised by how easy it was. No one saw me and the few workers who were at the site were too far away – and busy with construction – to see me.

I hid behind a pickup truck and approached the lip of the field opening. I snapped some quick photos and watched two workers stroll by without seeing me. I found a hard hat and considered wearing it in case I was spotted and needed to blend in. Riiiiight,, I thought, I’m sure there are plenty of people who walk around the stadium wearing a T-shirt from Guatemala and cargo shorts, furtively taking photos.

Fearing a charge of theft on top of the trespassing one I imagined I could still get, I left the hard hat in the truck bed and continued my unauthorized tour.

Steel beams provided a mental preview of what the stadium will look like when finished. Though most of the ground under the stands and in the passageways is still dirt, much of the field is already covered with concrete. The outfield looked to be taking shape and when I peered to the right-field foul area, I saw the first-base dugout carved out of the ground and the foul pole standing stoically down the line.

I continued to walk under the stands and found what I thought might turn out to be the steel skeleton of the future club suites. I pretended to be someone important enough to afford one of these suites and shuffled in.

After snapping more shots, I was thinking about walking around to the right-field side of the stadium or even finding a way to climb up a level, when I heard footsteps.

Be cool Arjewtino, I assured myself, doing my best impression of a cat burglar. I tiptoed to one of the other suites when a construction worker stumbled into my path.

“Oh, hey,” I said as nonchalantly as possible, hoping he’d mistake me for a Nationals’ press officer. “Just taking some pictures.”

“How did you get in here?” he asked, not fooled by my acting ability, but not showing anger, either.

“Oh, I just walked in from down the street,” I replied. It’s open.”

Talk fast, I thought, don’t act like you know it’s illegal to trespass.

“This stadium looks like it’s coming along,” I continued. “Think you’ll be finished by spring of next year?”

The worker, a silver-bearded man who carried the air of a foreman, eyed me without saying a word. I nodded my head and looked up at the rafters, trying to appear like an architect impressed that his vision of a major league stadium is finally being realized. I could tell he wasn’t buying any of this and I wondered if I could beat him in a foot race.

“You can’t be here,” he said. “You’re not wearing a hard hat and there’s work being done. This is dangerous.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked at him like he was an appetizer I didn’t order.

“Oh?” I said. “Ok, I’ll go.”

The man walked me out and didn’t participate in my awkward efforts at small talk. He didn’t care how excited I was about the Nats’ chances next year nor about my attendance at the DC United-Beckham game at RFK last week.

I neared the exit and he said, “Watch your step on your way out,” and disappeared.

I could still turn around, undetected, and do some more snooping, I thought.

Realizing a charge of trespassing could also carry a lifetime ban from the new stadium, I walked out into the sunlight.

Wait ‘til next year, I thought, wait ‘til next year.

My favorite photo was this full-sized one, which, as it turned out, I took from the same angle the artist’s rendition was drawn from: