>> This week's arts pick goes to the Curator's Office, who will be hosting performance artist Kathryn Cornelius in her first private gallery solo show, Common Ground. Cornelius, who has taken her wry performances around the world, will display two videos and two photograph series that show her searching for a kind of inner spirituality in an overconnected, digital world. Jeffry Cudlin writes in the exhibit brochure, "In these pieces, Cornelius appears silent, collected......

Last week a little dose of relief came to the city's art lovers and critics, as the National Gallery of Art announced they've filled the position to head up their department of modern art, vacant for around six months now. Harry Cooper comes to the NGA from the Harvard University Art Museums, and Washington City Paper's Jeffry Cudlin does a good job putting it in perspective. In other museum news, camera-in-cell-phone technology is officially history.......

A man walks out on stage. He sets down a bottle of water on the floor. Grabs the microphone, wrapping the cord around his hand a few times before clenching his fist around it. He then begins to speak, and continues to do so for almost three solid hours. Without a break, without even bending down to sip from the bottle of water he'd brought with him. And that's a Henry Rollins spoken word show.......

After letting us all enjoy a good summer break, next week the U.S. Senate will start debating legislation that would grant the District a voting seat in the House of Representatives. And in preparing for what is sure to be a spirited battle, big-name voting rights activists have recently stepped up the pressure with two back-to-back op-eds in Washington papers. Yesterday Maryland's former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and former Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts penned......

Watching ex lovers bicker and slap each other silly may not sound like the most relaxing way to spend the evening, but Washington Shakespeare Company’s production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives makes for a surprisingly breezy, relaxing evening at the theater. Setting helps. WSC has chosen Playbill Café’s tiny black box theater to stage the work, and between lovely set pieces and the atmospheric addition of a singing chanteuse behind a lazy veil (Barbara Papendorp),......

>> Earl Cunningham's America, which opens this Friday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features 50 paintings by one of the foremost folk artists of the 20th century. Known for his use of space and brilliant colors, Cunningham juxtaposes the ordinary with the unexpected and puts familiar subjects in unfamiliar settings. The result is an insightful commentary on American life and culture. >> Those looking for something new will have the chance to make their......

Presented without commentary. Or much commentary, anyway. I'd like to see some suggestions for other kinds of stories for which this headline might be useful, so get cracking in the comments. UPDATE: Poor washingtonpost.com is taking a real beating today. Via Wonkette, it seems someone reposted the obituaries of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford yesterday, in such a way that it seemed as though the Post was reporting their deaths very, very late.......

The longest day of the year has just passed us by, the solstice bells have rung out, and far to the north they've seen the sun at midnight. Here in Washington, we brace for the brutal heat we've only just tasted up to now. There is some consolation for the misery mother nature heaps on D.C.'s coming dog days. For many lucky office drones, in summertime the living truly can be easy. That filing that's......

Since 1983, Loose Lips, the City Paper's weekly local politics column, has been the place to get quirky news and commentary on the District's political figures. But today, James Jones, Loose Lips columnist for the last two years, bids farewell to the paper. Jones came to the City Paper after a stint at WAMU, and his first column was published on March 11, 2005. According to the folks at the City Paper, Jones has taken......

TUESDAY: Former vice president/rock star Al Gore will speak about his new book The Assault on Reason to a sold-out crowd at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium. Don't expect An Inconvenient Truth, though; this is all about shrinking approval ratings for the president and Congress, not shrinking coastlines. 6 p.m. Political journalist Michael Barone will speak about his book Our First Revolution, which is actually a reference to Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, not the......

If you didn’t muster the courage to apply for the D.C. Comedy Fest back in January, then at the very least, watch the people who did. Starting tonight, the fest will feature three night’s worth of shows, including an ode to what Bush did right, finalists in a short comedy film fest and auditions for Leno and Lettermen where big-deal bookers like Bob Read of Last Comic Standing will hover in the audience, sniffing out......

Well, Nats fans, what's there to say? What can we add to the criticism leveled by so many others? What can we say about an opening week where the Nats have yet to lead for a single pitch? When the pitching has spotted the opposition leads of 6-0, 6-0, 5-0, 4-0, 7-0, 6-0, and 3-0? When the lineup needed 30 at bats to finally get a hit with a man in scoring position? When the......

Past attendees of any of the F.W. Thomas Performaces, the semi-regular literary-comedic efforts of City Paper contributor Adam Mazmanian held at Warehouse, are well versed in the religion of Lowery. That's T.M. Lowery, or Mike Lowery, or Thomas Michael Lowery, depending on who you ask, the baby-faced "artist-in-residence" of F.W. Thomas and proprietor of The Argyle Academy, a collection of neurotic cartoon animal characters. Mazmanian invited Lowery to present some of his drawings at the......

Written by DCist Contributors Gayle S. Putrich and Mike Roscoe Awards season: long gone in Hollywood; just getting started for D.C.'s restaurants. If you don't believe us, just ask Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve, Eamonn's, and the forthcoming Majestic. Armstrong has been named a contender for two awards in as many days: Best Mid-Atlantic Chef from the James Beard Foundation on Monday and now Chef of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.......

Two new shows opened yesterday on the second floor of the Hirshhorn Museum, and an unexpected ice day offered the perfect chance to go see them. Refract, Reflect, Project brings together a few rooms worth of light works from the museum's collection, some more recent and some classics. The most striking work was an installation by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, whose The weather project transformed the Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern in 2003.......

In France as here in the U.S., the policier, or cop film, is ground well trod, a genre that is hard to approach in a fresh way. Director Xavier Beauvois's attempt to do just that in Le Petit Lieutenant opened in France in 2005 and in New York last fall, but it has finally come to Washington for a limited, exclusive engagement at E Street Cinema. The story, co-written by Beauvois and a handful......

The Kirov Opera continues its annual residency at the Kennedy Center with Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff. This last opera by the exceptional Italian composer is a mixture of slapstick comedy -- Arrigo Boito based the libretto on portions of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays -- and an exquisite score of Mendelssohnian delicacy and carefully crafted drama. As the twilight work of a revered composer, it holds a special place in......

FRIDAY: >> Baltimore's Fertile Ground return to 9:30 Club for a concert with collaborator Raheem DeVaughn called Let's Do It Again. Also singer Anthony David. 9 p.m., $22. >> Gallery Openings of Note: Maria Friberg opens her show, titled embedded, at Conner Contemporary, reception 6 to 8 p.m. That's embedded #4 at left. Also we checked out a preview of Colby Caldwell's new show, Small Game, at Hemphill Fine Arts on Wednesday, and definitely recommend......

>> The President has granted his annual Thanksgiving Pardon today to two lucky birds from Missouri named Flyer and Fryer. Though some animal rights groups are reportedly upset that Bush plans to send them both to Disneyland, which is apparently not the happiest place on Earth for turkeys — last year's turkey only lived for a few months after arriving in the Magic Kingdom. The rest of you Turkeys still hoping for a reprieve, try......

In recent years, various neighborhood listservs have popped up across the District, serving as hyper-local sounding boards and electronic community forums. There's NewHillEast, WoodleyFriends, cleveland-park, HillcrestDC, AdamsMorgan, columbia heights, FriendsOfSligoCreek, gloverpark, MPD-1D -- you get the idea. So much commentary is exchanged on these many listservs that the City Paper's blog, City Desk, has taken to publishing twice-weekly excerpts of the best and weirdest that gets exchanged. But one new listserv is looking to fight......

>> As exciting as all the congressional politics were yesterday, there was also a whole bunch of local fun going on. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has full results of the races, including those for ANC, for your viewing pleasure (in a PDF format). [DCBOEE] >> Hey, who needs political representation when you get to file your taxes a whole extra day later? Something for us to look forward to come April.......

Congratulations, Alyssa R.! Your thoughtful commentary on this week's Decemberists show won you the gatefold vinyl copy of The Crane Wife and a special, limited edition lithograph signed by the band! We were particularly fond of Alyssa's social and political observations as they related to the show. Here's what she had to say: A couple of thoughts: 1)The material from "The Crane Wife" rocks a lot harder on stage than it does on the album,......

If you love French film, then the festival that opens this week, C'est Chic, is right up your allée. Between October 12 and 28, recent French releases will be given special screenings at three excellent venues, the National Gallery of Art, La Maison Française, and the AFI Silver Theater. You can purchase a pass ($60 for members of La Cinémathèque) through the Web site of La Maison Française, which will get you 13 films for......

FRIDAY: >> Comets on Fire bring their detailed, funky prog sound to D.C., with openers Benjy Ferree(***) and (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope at Black Cat. I (heart) music tells us that if you love Deep Purple, you'll like Comets on Fire. Listen to a few tracks over at Hype Machine to test the waters. $12, 9:30 p.m. >> Looking for a straight-up chance to dance? Venezuela's Los Amigos Invisibles always deliver, with DJ Afro at......

Watch carefully in the coming weeks and you may see them. People roaming the streets of Chinatown, Adams Morgan, Mt. Pleasant. They'll stop to check their cell phone, punch the keys, wait, check again, then move walk down the street looking with strange interest at empty buildings, houses and random Starbucks. Yellow Arrow's Capitol of Punk tour, which we previewed in May, kicked off this week, turning D.C. streets into an impromptu museum for a......

Everyone is all about George Pelecanos these days. We interviewed him, he was on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, and he's appeared in various area bookstores to pimp his new crime thriller, The Night Gardener. If Pelecanos is known for anything, it's the local references he liberally infuses his writings with. Criminals and the police that chase them live and work in the seediest parts of the region, giving readers a glimpse into the underworld of......

Fiona Apple is a woman posessed. It's more or less public knowledge, but the piano playing songstress' level of intensity wasn't entirely clear until we saw her Monday night at Wolf Trap. She took the stage in a long blue dress with her hair hanging down, without pomp or introduction, and launched into "Get Him Back," from her latest ablum, Extraordinary Machine. Assuming her position at a beautiful piano, she made little commentary as......

While we celebrate the reopening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery as classic examples of what museum care and innovation should be, the Smithsonian Institution at large may be slowly losing its grasp on the rest of its constituency. D.C.-based art critic and blogger Tyler Green has some critical words in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about the dilapidated conditions the other Smithsonian museums are suffering due to Congress' underfunding of......

We were not alone last week in our criticism of the transportation debacle during Deluge '06. Nor were we the only ones to question what the response says about our emergency preparedness. Despite the tendency of D.C. officials to grade themselves on their performance (they did quite well, if they do say so themselves), we prefer a more rigorous review. And who better to turn to for this than that great bastion of criticism......

This past month’s rain washed out plenty of events in the District; among them was our chance to see Metropolitan with Shwa and Five Four at Ft. Reno on June 12. Instead, for this month’s Three Stars we’re reviewing the band’s third album The Lines They Get Broken. Metropolitan have one of the more upbeat sounds in D.C., and stay away from political commentary or avant garde art rock. The band’s sound draws from cited......