The good news: You still have almost an hour to catch the D.C. Council Chairman bagging groceries at the Safeway in Southeast. The bad news: you won't be able to get the image of him performing prostate exams out of your mind all weekend.......

Most of us have made, or will make, a major career change at some point, but it must have been a shock to those close to her when, in 1997, Vijai Nathan decided to abandon her career in journalism for the dog-eat-dog world of stand-up comedy. Since then, she has appeared on ABC News’ 20/20, PBS, The Oxygen Network, the BBC, and in 2003 was named one of the country's top ten comics by Backstage......

For the last seven years, a renegade group of anti-pants New Yorkers have held an annual No Pants Subway Ride event, which last year attracted over 200 participants. In 2006, it even garnered several arrests. And now a Facebook group has popped up promoting a copycat event here on D.C.'s Metro this Saturday, Jan. 12. The proposed event, scheduled from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, currently has 82 confirmed guests on Facebook......

Sure, you picked up a book or two last year. You tore through God Is Not Great, nodding in agreement along the way. You read Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows on the Metro, brandishing the cover proudly and caring little that anyone saw you. You read a lot of graphic novels. And, then, just for grins and giggles, you picked up The Divine Comedy in the original Italian. Okay, maybe you read this version......

Aimee Mann never seemed like one of pop's 500 likeliest candidates to release a Christmas album, but last year’s One More Drifter in the Snow was a tasteful, minor-key treat, and her “1st Annual Christmas Show” at the Birchmere last December was one of the best concerts of 2006. As she promised she would at the end of last year’s freewheeling interfaith revue, she's hitched up the sleigh again this year for a monthlong yule-tour......

French pianist Alain Planès has made good (and sometimes great) recordings of everything he played on his Sunday recital (see my recent review of the conclusion of his complete Debussy set). The event was sponsored by the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences, as the third concert of what is, regrettably, its last season of concerts presented off the campus of the National Institutes of Health. In an unforgettable juxtaposition, the early start time......

Over in academia, it's finals time, but the receSs improv team over at George Washington University isn't compromising their weekend, which will mark the group's final show of 2007, over it. On their unofficial blog, The Colonialist, they're offering up reasons why their peers shouldn't either. In the past, receSs alums have gone on to pursue real-life comic gigs, including TJ Miller (now on the ABC show "Carpoolers"), Herschel Bleefeld (who landed a role in......

The Onion's regular American Voices segment takes on the D.C. HIV/AIDS epidemic today, proving once again that there is no holy mad cow disease too sacred for America's Finest News Source.......

After a long wait, CityDance Ensemble Rehearsal Director Christopher K. Morgan finally gets to see his face on the silver screen. In December of 2003, Morgan was cast as a dancer in John Turturro’s film Romance & Cigarettes. After filming in 2004, the movie faced some setbacks and became what the Associated Press referred to as “the luckless orphan of corporate shuffling.” More than two years after its original release date, Romance & Cigarettes......

FRIDAY: >> Local comic book store Fantom Comics is celebrating the grand opening of their new Union Station store tonight with a party from 6 to 10:30 p.m. They'll be serving up free pizza on the early side and the comedy stylings of the Geek Comedy Tour during the second half of the night. There will also be a trivia contest with $500 gift certificates up for grabs. The party is inside the Union......

It's hard to believe that a musical could get you hooked on phonics. But spelling suddenly becomes irresistible in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the touring production of the Broadway hit, now playing at the National Theater. The pleasing, goofy show takes an amalgam of precocious, oddball kids and makes you root for them all. There are archetypes for sure -- the obsessive Asian kid, the nasal, self-important geek -- but each one......

>> The 1900s are playing the Rock and Roll Hotel, not to be confused with the 1990s. Three Stars alum Shortstack will join them on the bill, along with The Dead Trees and Kitty Hawk. $10, 8:30 p.m. >> Tonight at Blues Alley one of the area's finest jazz drummers, Nasar Abadey, takes the stage with SuperNova, featuring Allyn Johnson on piano, Gary Thomas, Jazz Studies Chair at Peabody, altoist Joe Ford, and bassist......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

Craig Wedren has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. How it is that he managed to avoid becoming a household name is a bit of a mystery. Pony Express Record, his 1994 major label debut with Shudder to Think, the band that he got his start with in D.C. in the mid-80s, should have been a huge breakthrough. It was an adventurous record of inventive, art-damaged post-punk, all shifting time signatures and angular......

Having failed to make their intended satire clear to the George Washington University campus, seven students felt the need to come forward late last night to take responsibility for those "anti-Muslim" posters we told you about yesterday. The Hatchet published parts of the letter after receiving it last night. Among the seven students who admitted their involvement was ubiquitous IVAW poster boy and current GWU graduate student Adam Kokesh. "It is to our great dismay......

>> DC9's hosting a Dubstep party featuring DJs Beatcarnival and Gavin Holland. Get your bass-heavy electro-dance Thursday groove thing on for $8. >> Novelist Porochista Khakpour to discuss her debut, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, at The Modernist Society's event at Bourbon in Adams Morgan. Free drinks from 8 to 9 p.m., then questions from the audience until 10 p.m. >> Tickets are still available to the opening night of the DC Asian Pacific American......

We noted awhile ago that the owners of the Birchmere had been in talks to open another venue in Silver Spring — while that has fallen by the wayside, it looks like Live Nation will be moving in instead. The Clear Channel spinoff, which produces concerts and owns music venues around the country, including Nissan Pavilion, various Fillmores, and the House of Blues chain, signed a letter of intent to build in an old J.C.......

Ah, Wilderness! is the lone comedy in Eugene O'Neill's eye-gougingly tragic catalog. It works as a sort of photo-negative of his later, bleaker masterpiece A Long Day's Journey into Night, with which it shares the setting of a "large small town" in early 20th century New England. Written in the early years of the Great Depression but set in the happier days of 1906, it’s a deliberately idyllic take on the sweet miseries of......

The Unmentionables, Woolly Mammoth’s incendiary season-opener, boasts one of the strongest companies to tread a District stage this year. Their comic timing is both tight and loose, like a well-rehearsed but highly instinctive group of musicians. But the real star is Bruce Norris’s play itself, a screwball satire about imperialism, do-gooderism and hypocrisy. Set in equatorial West Africa, this jeremiad finds as much fault with supposedly altruistic relief workers who come to ease their......

FRIDAY: >> In case you missed Chapel Hill's The Old Ceremony (pictured) last time they were in town, they'll be at the Rock and Roll Hotel tonight with Junior League, Unwed Sailor and John Pringle. We've raved in the past about lead singer Django Haskins' Nick Cave-meets-Ben Folds stage presence, and since then we've picked up their 2006 release Our One Mistake. If you can't make the show, we highly suggest giving them a listen......

Good morning, Washington, and welcome to a world with a new home run record. That's right: Barry Bonds hit his 756th career homer last night against our very own Washington Nationals. We're sure there are some mixed feelings among the Nats today about being immortalized in a video clip that'll likely be replayed for decades to come. Four Shot During National Night Out: Last night was the National Night Out, a crime-prevention event where citizens......

The American Century Theatre’s update of the FDR-era Broadway smash Hellzapoppin’ kicks off with a terrible joke: An announcer on the P.A. who thinks he’s there for another show throws a fit when he sees the copy he’s supposed to read. It’s forced. It’s painful. It’s not funny. Then — Mercy! — a man in a gorilla suit shows up. Man in gorilla suit = crazy hilarious. But if you don't agree, then perhaps......

>> It's the annual Night of 1,000 Cakes at Fort Reno. Did we mention the Free Cake? Free Cake! (in the form of cupcakes). Also Aquarium, Benjy Ferree and Yell County. 7:15 p.m. >> Jammin' Java in Vienna is trying something different tonight with Porto Beat, a night of electronic music featuring four of the area's top DJ talents: Ross Lara, DJ Lantern, Ramiro and DJ Nexius. All ages show, $10 for under 21,......

Calling all lame, angsty middle school versions of yourself. As part of a national tour, the cultish comedy show MORTIFIED is coming to the DC-area in October, but before then, the folks behind it need you to unearth those dusty Pee-chee portfolios filled with goo-goo ga-ga love letters, poems and top-secret journal entries. Let strangers hear the precious—preciously embarrassing, that is—truth about what you wanted to do with Oscar on the swing set. Or how......

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes), the long-running signature show of Chicago’s the Neo-Futurists that we reviewed yesterday, requires each of its performers to be a hybrid of improv artist, actor, athlete, and polemicist. Notwishstanding the fact that the team currently performing the show in the Fringe Festival is 40% female, it also takes some serious balls. Because although you can rest assured that if a “play”......

FRIDAY: >> Odds are good that you'll be able to happily dance the night away at Rock and Roll Hotel, no matter what kind of music you're in the mood for. Downstairs you've got Party Bros., a tongue-in-cheek tribute to party music by DJs Gavin Holland and Chris Burns, featuring tunes ranging from Black Sabbath to Taylor Dayne, 9:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., while upstairs is a free funk and soul session from Moneytown, also......

Mayor-For-Life Marion Barry continues to amaze us. Not only is he utterly untouchable by the long hand of the law, but he is an amazing politician; he just keeps getting elected to practically anything for which he's run. Now, he's even won a race he wasn't actively campaigning for: Barry (or his likeness, rather) was selected to fill the last slot at the forthcoming Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Penn Quarter. The museum, which will......

>> Since Tuesday is the new Thursday, we'd recommend heading over to Rock and Roll Hotel for a stellar line-up of DJs including Ken and Juan of East Coast Boogiemen, Lexus King, Devin Byrnes of Exit Only, Aaron Sparks and Keenan. 8:30 p.m.- 1:30 a.m., free all night long. >> Montreal's The Besnard Lakes play with Dirty On Purpose at the Black Cat's backstage, 9 p.m., $10. If you can't get enough of the......

FRIDAY: >> Even though Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an obvious choice for the movie-going crowd this weekend, the Avalon Theatre -- just north of the Potter madness at the Uptown -- is showing Talk to Me, the new biopic on the life of famed Washington, D.C., talk-show host and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. 5:50 and 8:30 p.m. >> Unbuckled alumni The Vita Ruins celebrate the release of their......

Washington Improv Theater knows that it's intern harvest season. By day, the twenty-somethings flip and flop in business casual around the Hill and by night, drunkenly attempt to figure out the Metro rail system. WIT has been studying the funny critters for their second (and final) installment of an intern-themed improv comedy night called “WIT Hot American Summer.” Ken Hays and Rich Nyman, the stars of the two-man show, aren’t actual interns, but they know......