Mayor Vince Gray, who was getting arrested for protesting way before any of these Occupy people, has made it his mission to turn October into a month-long push for D.C. autonomy. Part of that push involves calling in favors from some of his celeb pals, who will record public service announcements denouncing the District's second-class status. more ›

WHEREAS, Mayor Vince Gray thinks that television and film star Hayden Panettiere "has proven not only her acting chops, but also her commitment to the cause of full democracy for the people of the District of Columbia,” and... more ›

A group of athletes, celebrities and local media personalities gathered at Kastles Stadium along the Southwest waterfront yesterday for the Celebrity Soccer Challenge to benefit the Mia Hamm Foundation. more ›

D.C. may be known as Hollywood for ugly people, but for a little while last night, it was almost like we were just plain Hollywood. Granted, there was no actual red carpet at last night's "red carpet" U.S. premiere — which was billed as a World Premiere despite Tuesday night's London screening — of Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian at the National Air & Space Museum. But there was a crowd of excited fans lining the steps up to the museum's doors, a red velvet rope line populated with microphone-wielding entertainment journalists inside, stressed-out personal assistants and handlers in headsets, heavily-made-up television correspondents, and discreet but tough-looking bodyguards. Substitute middle-aged male studio execs for the slightly paler middle-aged male government types who got invites to the event, and you could almost imagine you were at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. more ›

President Obama's inauguration was a star-studded affair, with some of America's most famous personalities and entertainers showing up at concerts, gala events or with prime seats to Tuesday's swearing-in. One star, though, tried to translate her fame into better seating—with mixed results. more ›

The second Transformers movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is apparently filming in Washington right now, because people keep sending us celebrity gossip reports that actor Shia LaBeouf allegedly set off a smoke alarm inside a bathroom at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum over the weekend when he tried to sneak a cigarette inside the building. The story seems to have come entirely from the National Enquirer, however, so we should probably take it with a grain of salt for now. The actor was recently fined $500 for smoking illegally on a Burbank sidewalk (you can't even smoke outside in many California cities now). Why is Shia LaBeouf famous again? more ›

>> Lieutenant Sean M. Egan of the District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department has emailed out a citywide call for blood donations in the wake of four D.C. firefighters having been seriously burned yesterday at a rowhouse fire at 621 4th St. NE. You can find a blood donation center here. >> George Clooney is in D.C., and still hott. [GossipGirls] >> Police are investigating an arson at Western Presbyterian Church on Virginia... more ›

MONDAY: French journalist Sylvain Cypel will speak about his book Walled, a look at relations between Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the barriers — both cultural and physical — between the two groups. Politics and Prose, 7 p.m. D.C.-area Star Wars geeks will want to check out Olsson's Arlington/Courthouse, where science-fiction author Karen Traviss will be talking about her new novel Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice. We love Han, Chewie and the gang as... more ›

Written by DCist contributor Maria Flores Sometime in the early 1970s, when the photographs in Melody Maker, NME, and Rolling Stone were no longer enough to satiate his appetite, Claude Gassian swapped his guitar for a 35mm camera and took to the road with his finger on the shutter button. So began his photographic conquest to document the lives of some of his favorite musical artists. Over three decades later, his photographs stand alone as... more ›

While we didn't get too many Sanjaya spottings over the weekend, it seems like a few actual celebrities mixed it up at this weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner. Sheryl Crow and Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, chatted with Karl Rove between cocktails and dessert. Crow and "Inconvenient Truth" producer David walked over to the presidential adviser's table, where David suggested that Rove "take a new look at global warming." David says Rove... more ›

MONDAY Richard Preston, fresh off his Daily Show appearance, where he confounded Jon Stewart, brings his unique perspective on some of America's oldest residents, California redwood trees, in The Wild Trees. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, 7:00 p.m. TUESDAY With the glut of celebrities proclaiming themselves Buddhists, it's sometimes hard to pin down the historical and ethical roots of this ancient religion. Author Lama Surya Das, who the Dalai Lama calls 'The American... more ›

Pull out the seersucker suits and floral frocks, D.C:. Spring is almost on. Today's weather will be more pleasant than yesterday's, but we're keeping our eyes on the prize. Tomorrow the equinox marks the official start of Spring and here at DCist headquarters we're already preparing for a season sans boots, scarves and Snowpocalypses... Oh my! Metro Sued Over Pedestrian Deaths: The husband of one of the women killed by a Metro bus on Feb.... more ›

Veteran gossip columnist Michael Musto is in town today promoting his new book, La Dolce Musto, a collection from his columns of the same name (he'll be at Nage Restaurant from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.). The bespectacled provocateur has spent 20 years at the Village Voice chronicling New York City’s gay life, nightlife and sex life, sometimes in terms that would make Candace Bushnell blush. Along with the tales of club kids, politics and sex... more ›

Well, consider our faith in the capital city of the world's superpower (mostly) restored. Despite the wintry mix of death and official emergency declaration yesterday, District kids and Federal employees are all expected to test their mettle and report for duty. Of course, the pride in knowing that long-predicted precipitation won't bring your citizens to their knees is nothing compared to having a second straight long weekend. Lucky kids in many Virginia counties have another day to frolic in the icy, slushy remains of snow while most other suburban schools are opening two hours late. more ›

While his star turns in Terms of Endearment and The Squid and the Whale suggested a softer side, we had no idea that the still waters of Jeff Daniels ran quite so deep. Turns out the actor has been compiling a cache of folk songs over the past 30 years, and will be showcasing them at Wolftrap tonight. While it'd be fun to rake Dumb (or was he Dumber?) over the coals for doing the... more ›

Not since 7' 7" Gheorghe Muresan guarded the paint for the Bullets from 1993 to 1997 has an enormous dude played basketball regularly for a D.C. area team - sorry Roy Hibbert, 7' 2" doesn't cut it. For those fans looking for another behemoth to cheer on, the Maryland Nighthawks of the American Basketball Association have announced that they've signed 7' 8 3/4" Sun Ming Ming, supposedly the tallest person to ever play professional basketball.... more ›

FRIDAY: >> We don't usually hype big studio movies in the Picks, but when faced with a certain kind of reptile on a specific form of transportation — there's not much you can do but cross your fingers it doesn't turn out to suck and jump on the hype train (err, plane). More specifically, literally dozens of local D-list Internet celebrities will be attending the 10:10 p.m. screening of Snakes on a Plane at the... more ›

About as close to celebrity-status as the District gets is when Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt decide to buy a house here and Woody Harrelson spends a few days filming a few shots for an upcoming movie. That might soon change. Well, kind of. NBC 4 is reporting that the owners of the world famous Madame Tussauds wax museum are in talks with the District over the possibility of opening a museum in downtown D.C.... more ›

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for... more ›

Although the advent of the real-time Gawker Stalker map has freaked out certain celebrities who would prefer that their Us Weekly-devouring public not know that they're dining at New York's Tao or taking their fruit-monikered babies out for walks on Fifth Avenue, DCist has no qualms about letting its readers know where local celebs hang out. And there's no area celeb more freshly minted than George Mason University basketball coach Jim Larranaga, who just yesterday... more ›

The weekly Ist wrap-up is written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. SFist can finally admit it: It's possible that Bary Bonds juiced. Is Bay Area artist (tempted to put quotes around that) Thomas Kinkaid "kinda crappy" or "explosively crappy" or does he just like marking territory?... more ›

Yeah, we heard the rumors last week too. By the looks of the constantly churning rumor mill, it appears that the cutely coupled Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (or Pitt-Jolie) just bought a house in Kalorama. Now, we'd love to get excited about the prospect of honest to God A-List celebrities being our new neighbors, but DCist has been burned once too often. The couple's real estate dithering, which began around the Thanksgiving holiday, is... more ›

Djakarta is the artist behind the “Niggaz4Life” pieces, currently on display as part of the E2: Carving a Path exhibition, previously mentioned on DCist. Her work derives its title from NWA’s classic rap album and song “Niggaz4Life,” released in 1991. Djakarta’s video work is a montage of film clips from popular Hollywood films that portray black people singing, dancing, and mugging for the camera with the exhibit’s namesake song as a soundtrack. Her two-dimensional works are imitations of the classic military recruitment poster, featuring prominent celebrities Vin Diesel, Mariah Carey, and Tiger Woods as central figures. The posters are samples from a city-wide poster campaign, wherein posters were placed on telephone poles, newspaper boxes, walls and even inside newspapers. We caught up with Djakarta recently to talk about her artwork and the social issues that inspired it.

What is the intention behind the posters and postcards?

These are like Army recruitment posters, but inverting the message so that instead of one person pointing at the masses and saying “I Want You,” it’s the masses of black people saying “We Want You,” so they’re like wanted posters. It’s easy to identify the celebrities, and I wanted to catch people’s attention and make them ask questions. I like the juxtaposition of these clean-cut mulatto celebrities who don’t really associate themselves with being black have “Niggaz4Life” stamped on their forehead or stamped across their chest in a poster that say “We Want You.”

And hopefully when people see “Niggaz4Life” they’ll go “whoa.” They won’t think Mariah Carey has a new CD out. They know that’s definitely something she’s not going to attach to herself to, and the same with Vin Diesel and definitely not Tiger Woods, so hopefully it just causes people to think a little bit more.

more ›

Wow. Just after the -ist family expanded to Asia and the City of Brotherly Love, our bosses up at Gothamist let us know that Parisist, the first -ist site in a city to use the Euro and the first to be in a different language (French, natch), is open for business. We're excited to have them aboard, though our decidedly elementary French can only parse out that they're writing about a big festival with kebabs and reggae, Parisian architecture, and what we're pretty sure means celebrities moving around Paris. Hmm. Looks like it's time to break out the Google translator, though that can sometimes produce comical results. That won't keep us from reading on July 24th (err, 24 Juillet) for the final stage of the Tour. more ›

Washington, D.C., may not be a locale frequently visited by the flaws and foibles of A-List celebrities, but the nexus of power and politics nevertheless yields a generous supply of dish. Washingtonians know where to get their gossip, and they have a decent array of choice: such as kitten-with-a-whip Wonkette, the above-the-fray Reliable Source Richard Leiby, the unbuttoned back pages of The Hill and Roll Call's "Heard on the Hill," the window into vicarious living... more ›

For those who had today off of work, we hope you enjoyed a relaxing three-day weekend. If you're getting back to the swing of things, here's what you may have missed on DCist over the past weekend. Here's a photo of the Key Bridge taken from the 36th Street/Exorcist stairs in Georgetown. more ›

Good news and bad news for all you Tucker Carlson groupies, and you know who you are. First, the good news: The Philly Inquirer reports that the former "Crossfire" commentator has just signed a contract with MSNBC and will host an as of yet unnamed program at 9 p.m. So, good news! Tucker will be back on the air in all his bow tied glory. more ›

With 8 days and counting until the election, the airwaves are getting mighty crowded. Candidates, pundits and celebrities are all vying for some air time this week in a last ditch effort to bring their political views to the TV watching public. They NYTimes reports that the week ahead is chock full of political programming: Viewers can see Sean Combs...with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News tonight. Later in the evening, Madeleine K. Albright, the... more ›

(By DCist contributor Hemal Jhaveri) more ›

The group behind the effort to build a massive video slots and entertainment complex on New York Avenue in Northeast D.C. is making a slight retreat as it has withdrawn about 10% of the 3,800-some petitions submitted to get a measure approving D.C. gambling on the Nov. 2 ballot. The Post reports that the group's lawyer, John Ray, listed 389 petitions that the initiative's pushers "would like to withdraw." Three petition circulators told the D.C.... more ›