Meryl Streep as Mother Courage in John Walter's absorbing, perceptive Theater of War. There are documentaries that entertain and many more that educate, and there are plenty that grab you by the lapels and spout hummus-breath in your face about how you need to stop eating meat and trade your vulgar, barbarous combustion-powered vehicle in for a bike — today! Then there are the rare documentaries that prod you, subtly but insistently, to reexamine the......

The Washington Post has their ear to the ground, listening for the news that D.C. really wants to hear: the next wave of super duper anti-rat technology. Or not, they add, but Joseph Dussich, inventor of the Repel-X trash bag, thinks he's found the key to Pied Piper the city's rats right out of town, or at least away from alley dumpsters. His trash bags use the aroma of eucalyptus and a few secret ingredients......

By DCist contributor John Harlow Created and organized by artist and curator Mark Tribe, the Port Huron Project is a series of reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and '70s, conducted at their original locations by paid performers. Previous PHP events have featured enactments of speeches originally delivered by Coretta Scott King and Howard Zinn in New York and Boston respectively. Tomorrow at 6 p.m., the National Mall will......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

In late February of 2005, I found myself walking along a path in Central Park when, at dusk, a light snow began to fall. As the snow blanketed the landscape, it sucked up the sounds of the city, leaving only one thing audible: the sound of the saffron curtains over our heads lazily flapping in the breeze. Suddenly, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates stood out in brilliant contrast to the ear just as they popped......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end with seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. DCist reports that the......

What a weekend to be in Washington. No doubt we'll be seeing a whole lot of you around the Mall for one event or another this weekend. DCist would like to take this opportunity to recommend sunscreen with a high SPF. We just can't have all our readers looking like lobsters come Monday morning. Not a sexy look. FRIDAY: >> The D.C. music scene says farewell to Q and Not U tonight at Black Cat.......

MONDAY: >> The definite must-see show this evening is sure to be Q and Not U's performance at Fort Reno. As we reported earlier, the band is breaking up, and this concert will be one of their last. But if you can't make it tonight, don't worry too much - they're playing shows at the Black Cat September 22 and 23. Tonight, the politically-charged hip hop group Son of Nun opens, and the music gets......

(Photo of a photog let loose around the Tidal Basin from DCJohn's Flickr photostream.) We guess they're the D.C. version of the Gates. Instead of visitors in Central Park looking at saffron fabric, we have visitors in West Potomac Park admiring a blanket of pink flowers ... except that unlike Christo's public art, the cherry blossoms will return next year, assuming a swarm of beavers or northern snakeheads don't crawl out of the water......

Perhaps we were blinded by all of the orange we saw at the Gates in New York's Central Park this past weekend, but we think the City Paper has adopted the marketing tactics of Yellow Cab and The Washington Times. Has the City Paper gotten new distribution bins? We think so. The bins are black with an orange window frame. So we guess orange is in. Everywhere it seems. Despite its name, Yellow Cab of......

Drawing 2004" src="http://www.dcist.com/archives/2005_2The-Gates.jpg" width="181" height="300" align="right" hspace="5"/>New York City is buzzing with the imminent opening of Christo & Jeanne-Claude's public art project, "The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005," this Saturday (weather permitting). The Corcoran, capitalizing on this buzz, is offering a "Preview" program of the project tonight at 7 p.m. Michael S. Cullen, Christo historian and sometime project director, will speak about previous projects on which he worked with the artists, including......

(From DCist contributor Zoe Mitchell) Yeah, yeah, we know flash mobs were, like, so 2003, but DCist is intrigued by a posting on a local blog about a 'First DC Flash Mob'. Technically, it isn't really the first in D.C., but this flash mob excites us because: Traditionally, flash mobs have had no political connotations, however, this one will be different. While flash mobs in other cities have been politicized, in protest-happy D.C., flash mobs......