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As mentioned back in May, the Cleveland Park Citizen’s Association started dealing with a full-fledged revolt when the board, knowing it was about to be ousted by a large group of members that disagreed with them, shut down elections. Very Soviet of them, as reinforced by Mark Fisher’s post, “The Iron Fist of Cleveland Park’s Politburo.”

Well, the power shift has finally taken place. According to DCist, the UNITY Slate, led by John Chelen, claimed victory and revitalized the civic group. How that fares from here on out, we’ll see. George Idelson, the incumbent who decided not to run for re-election, passed his torch to Jeff Davis. Probably because he was humiliated by the local press for running the organization like the Nomenklatura.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with Silver Spring, I have one word for you: ESSCA. Time to explore a new slate of candidates for the ESSCA elections. And we have to come up with a better name than the UNITY Slate.

Ideas?

Of course, they went and changed the date on things. Walk and movie screening are tomorrow in Georgetown. For all the latest details, go to www.zombielandzombiewalks.com.

In other news, tickets for Michael Moore’s appearance at AFI for Capitalism: A Love Story sold out in all of 17 minutes, according to Silver Spring Penguin. The screening itself is on Monday, October 5 at 8:00pm.

Speaking of AFI, there’s been a lot of chatter on Twitter and such about the new AFI Silver Theatre marquee. When I first saw it I was unsure, and while it’s growing on me, I still continue to miss the old one. Evidently the parts weren’t available to fix the old one properly, so they decided to upgrade. As long as it doesn’t get too Times Square-like (now that Rudy Giuliani ruined that area for good), I’m okay. It’s here to stay, so bitching and moaning isn’t going to do much good anyway. You make the call.

Well, this season’s first meeting of the East Silver Spring Citizens Association was uneventful. Some good information, though. The coordinator of the Fenton Street Market thanked everyone for all their work to put on the first of two events, and reminded everyone that the next market will be Saturday, October 3. Just in time to feed into the South Silver Spring Block Party. Really looking forward to the latter. Hope you all come out. LT Paul Liquorie from the Montgomery County Police Department also spoke at length about crime and safety in our area. A good question-and-answer session, and LT Liquorie did a great job of fielding all the gripes/questions, giving contact names and numbers for issues, and giving good safety tips.

I had to leave just before 9:00, as the meeting was supposed to end at 8:30, so I didn’t hear any talk about why ESSCA quit the Presidents Council of Silver Spring Civic Associations (PREZCO). I assumed they were waiting until I was gone, as I saw someone actually watching out the window until I drove off. As I understand it, ESSCA wanted to try to dictate policy through PREZCO while PREZCO simply wanted to give a “yea” or “nay” vote to Montgomery County propositions. Sounds like an “if-we-can’t-make-up-the-rules-we’re-taking-our-ball-and-going-home” situation, but I would expect nothing less.

If anyone has insight into the explanation given at the meeting, send me a note. I still don’t know why no one would say anything out in public on the listserv. The meetings are public. Anyone can attend. What’s the issue? Are they upset because some hack-job blogger outed them? Did they think their resignation from PREZCO would go unnoticed? I brought it out and people started asking questions. Deal with it, people. Or find something else to do with your golden years.

Unfortunately, I had to leave as Mel Tull from the Silver Spring Regional Center was taking the floor, but I could tell the conversation was about to drag on for a while longer. Bailing because inevitable and necessary. But in other big ESSCA news, you may have remembered a post earlier this year where I made fun of the lame membership cards given out at the meetings. I’d like to think my ridicule did something, as this year brings us snazzy new membership cards. Very impressive, if I do say so myself, especially considering where we came from.

Thus begins another season of ESSCA – not with a bang, but a whimper. I’m looking forward to the meeting where we discuss historic preservation in East Silver Spring. Hope you’ll join me.

ATTENTION WASHINGTON DC ZOMBIES!! Join your fellow DC Zombies at an advanced screening of Columbia Pictures’ ZOMBIELAND (Rated R) on Thursday, October 1 at a local movie theater to be announced soon! Admission is FREE  but you must dress like a Zombie. To reserve your seats, RSVP by sending an email to zombielanddc@gmail.com with the full name of each guest. You will receive a confirmation email with event details. After the screening, the undead will walk the streets of DC!

Stay tuned for news about an accompanying ZOMBIELAND Zombiewalk to be announced VERY SOON! Check out the Zombieland trailer here. View the Facebook event page here.

Editor’s note: This came from the Sony/Columbia pictures folks, and I told the people at the promotions company that I’d be willing to promote the hell out of this. Should be a great movie. Please feel free to pass it on. Details on actual theater and walk should be forthcoming any day now.

Boy – this zombie stuff has taken on a life of its own. We’ve gotten multiple requests for movie screenings from producers and filmmakers, and even questions about filming the event for a documentary on zombie culture in our society. This is gonna be something.

We have also been notified of a promotional screening of the new film Zombieland, due out in theaters October 2. The actual location of the screening is yet to be determined (most likely in the District), but it looks like it’s going to be scheduled for September 30. The company doing the promotion for Sony pictures plans on doing a zombie walk, and capacity notwithstanding, all the zombies in the walk will be granted free passes to the pre-release showing. There’s also talk of some good swag to go along with.

Stay tuned for details. The movie looks great, and it could be a good choice for next year’s walk if we can get a print at AFI.

This weekend’s romp through the Fenton Street Village and the DTSS Farmers’ Market brought some good laughs, as well as a dose of creepiness. Let’s start with the funnies:

Goat Bangers. I don’t think I need to say anything else.

Ditto on this one.

Now for the transition from funny to creepy (and definitely involving both), we turn to the Fenton Street Market. I know I can’t be the only one to feel this way about cat vests.

On top of this, we had what seemed like an abundance of mannequins. I don’t know if it’s some misplaced anxiety or if I’m the only one, but between the whacked facial hair, bizarre makeup, and a Sharon Stone look-alike, the whole place felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

And now for our Zombie Fix of the Day:
ThinkGeek.com now carries a remote control zombie. For the amazing low price of $24,99, you, too, can have an undead minion obey your every command, courtesy of the brain remote. As if that wasn’t enough: “To help your zombie, you can also pose its articulated neck, shoulders, and hips. Just keep reminding your zombie that it shouldn’t eat a big brain like yours; it should eat many little brains like those found in your coworkers’ heads. Because studies have shown that many little meals during the day are much better for you than one big meal.”

Looks like my publicizing of ESSCA quitting PREZCO caused a lot of questions to be asked (and not answered) on the listserv. After quoting this post, they asked why the action actually took place. After this non-answer…

The ESSCA Board did withdraw from Prezco.  The Board decided that it was not advantageous for ESSCA to remain a member.  We continue to cooperate and work with our neighboring civics and the Civic Federation.

…we got this:

[P]lease remember we have an open listserv that includes many people who are not in this community, as well as politicians and press.  There is no big drama, but it is important and not unusual for ESSCA and all the Civics that we work with to be discreet when discussing issues in such a public forum. We will discuss this in person, but don’t think the listserv is an appropriate forum for this discussion.  This was not an impulsive decision and does not lend itself to sound bites or one line answers.

Fortunately we have community blogs in which we can banter these things about. Perhaps they felt like PREZCO was not properly representing its members. Funny – I sometimes feel the same way about ESSCA.

And don’t forget the first ESSCA meeting of the season is on September 21 at 7:30 at the Sligo Recreation Center.

In other news…

More Chances to Save Sligo Creek
The Keep Sligo Open Charity Golf Event will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, September 9 with a shotgun start at 4:00pm. There is also a golf event the following day preceded by a joint press conference with Sligo Creek Golf Association, the Salute Military Golf Association and County Councilmember Valerie Ervin (District 5). The press conference will be followed by the “opening tee-off of the Sligo Creek Golf Association’s inaugural charity golf-outing fundraiser, featuring a foursome comprised of wounded heroes of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan who also happen to be frequent users of Sligo Creek Golf Course.”

I managed to get out and play Hampshire Greens this weekend for the first time – another MoCo course – and was quickly reminded of how easy the Sligo Creek course is. Yeesh.

Dog Days of Summer
Living Ruff and Downtown Silver Spring will be putting on the 2nd Annual Dog Days of Downtown Silver Spring, a “Fun Family & Pet Event.” Featured guests include NBC4′s Wendy Rieger and Mary Alice Yeskey from Food Network’s Ace of Cakes. Put those together, and we can hope for news footage of everyone (me included) eating fancy free cake.