Photo by Joe Newman

Last week, I decided to make my first visit to the MLK Memorial, which opened last year on the tidal basin, south of the National Mall. I figured I’d take some photos at sunset but the steady stream of tour bus traffic was a major turnoff.  The night wasn’t a total waste, as I stopped by the National World War II Memorial on the walk back. I didn’t have a lot of time but used my Gorillapod to take some long exposure shots.

Flickr photo by andrew.deci

Sea Scallop Sui Mai / Photo by Joe Newman

I admit that I’m a dim sum snob. If it doesn’t come in a bamboo steam container served from a push cart, it’s already got two strikes against it. Which meant Saturday brunch at The Source – Wolfgang Puck’s five-year-old foray into the Washington, D.C. dining scene — was starting off with little margin for error.

At the Newseum’s signature restaurant, Puck does for the traditional Chinese dumplings and buns what he did for pizza. Made it better? Not necessarily — but it’s definitely more interesting.

You would expect nothing less from Puck, who has transcended celebrity chef status to become one of the food industry’s most valuable brands. The Austrian-born entrepreneur may have made his name reinventing pizza in Beverly Hills, but these days, he’s more Vegas, baby.

According to his website, six of his 21 fine dining restaurants are in Las Vegas, matching the six he lists in the Los Angeles area. The Source is one of only two restaurants on the East Coast, with the other up the road in the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

Paired with the Newseum — one of the best “non-free” museums in the District — The Source is aptly named, as this is a city where everyone either is a source or relies on them.  Still, Puck conceded in a 2008 Washingtonian interview the name took some getting used to:

Photo by Joe Newman

I’ve lived in Washington, D.C. for more than four years but I hadn’t been to Arlington National Cemetery since my 8th grade field trip. It’s not as if the cemetery is out of the way and hard to get to.

It’s easily reached on the Metro’s blue line, or you can approach it on foot across the Arlington Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.

Flickr photo by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com)

I’ve been blogging in one form or another for more than a decade. My first, mostly experimental, blog aggregated Gator football news and was put together with Adobe PageMaker. Through the years, I’ve started blogs on urban design, acoustic music, t-shirts, poker, mixed martial arts and social media. One of my favorites was called 300 Words and was supposed to be a collaborative writing project where all the stories would be told in 300 words or less. Don’t steal that one. I might bring it back.

I’m not sure what this blog is going to be when it grows up. What’s a Cosmic Smudge, anyways? Well, for some time now, it has been my default username whenever I create an online profile. It comes from a short story by Susan Sontag: “”This city is neither a jungle nor the moon nor the Grand Hotel. In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints. Only some of its citizens have the right to be amplified and become audible.”

Sontag was writing about life in New York City. I have always liked the quote, especially the description of the city as a “conglomerate of bleeding energies.” And really, that’s probably as good a way as any to describe my intentions for this blog.

Flickr photo by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com)