Dave Modela

Bourbon, pizza, GET OFF MY LAWN, and feeling old.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@BeardedTesla @DirtyTesLa You're gonna open X tomorrow and find your handle changed to just Bearded.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@TPWDparks Traily McTrailface

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@DirtyTesLa @SnazzyLabs Like max speed!

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@EODHappyCaptain @shopmyexchange The Exchange hasn't been reasonably priced for a long time.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@BeardedTesla @MercedesAMGF1 @F1 😂

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@beyondreasdoubt The Murderbot series.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@DirtyTesLa @WifeDirtyTesla I disengaged and drove manually a few times. The last time was this week in the rain. FSD wouldn't do the speed limit on the highway in a drizzle.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@28delayslater 😂

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@jarvis_best @landysknee So you're a gay lumbersexual?

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@johnkonrad I still have my patch and certificate from the mid 70's. What grade did they do the test in?

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@briandstone It'll be no different for elected officials. The government will still be in disarray but the elected officials will just be richer. Put them all in a dormitory with a cafeteria so they don't have to buy/rent a place in DC

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@briandstone Disagree. That's the excuse they use every time they push a pay raise for civil servants. The people already in place get more money for the same work. When they hire new people, it's always friends, family, or those that think exactly like they do. 1/2

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@DirtyTesLa Nope, still on v14.2.2.5.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@TheMRS_BTG @BeardedTesla The boss has spoken!

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@DirtyTesLa Your power will probably be out during off-peak hours from now on.

[Drunk Old Grad @DrunkOldGrad]

This is incredibly difficult to write, however a West Point brother needs us right now.

Ben Lemon (2017) lost his 7-year-old son Solomon last month. His two remaining boys (ages 5 and 3) have the same rare mitochondrial disease.

Ben and his lovely wife Katja are not giving up. They are researching trials, going to work, and fighting for their family. 

Two things you can do right now: Share this post and support by giving what you can, link below: https://t.co/xnEBsb9F8a 

If you have connections in pharma or mitochondrial disease research, DM me directly. Pretzel Therapeutics (drug: PX578) is in trials that could change everything for his boys.

For Solomon. And for the Lemon family. 🖤💛

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@briandstone If we got rid of all of them and randomly picked people off the street to replace them, I think we'd be much better off.

[Dave Modela @Dave_Modela]

@AJamesMcCarthy For your deep space/solar system photos, but I voted for Gregory.