Beside the fact that the Yvettemobile showed up, other noteworthy things happened at the State of the District speech this afternoon. Like, for instance, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty gave a speech.

The speech itself: not noteworthy. That’s not to denigrate the efforts of Fenty senior speechwriter Alan Heymann, who did a great job shoehorning all those sweet Fenty initiatives into a tight 40 minutes. OK, a sprawling 40 minutes.

No, the good stuff happened when Hizzoner departed from the script. His faux pas:

• Fenty talked up the new Giant at Camp Simms in Ward 8. He meant to say, according to the script, “The store employs more than 200 District residents, 98 percent of whom are from Ward 8.” He actually said: “The store employs more than 90 percent of the people right here in Ward 8.” Ward 8 has an unemployment problem, but wow.
• He also talked up the new Target in Columbia Heights—-the first in the city. He added a bit of statistical support to his speech, citing how the new Target “had the 2nd highest sales of any Target in the District of Columbia.” Where is this extremely successful phantom Target we’ve missed all these years??

The lesson? Stick to the script next time, Mr. Mayor!