>> Two quality offerings from the Black Cat tonight: Japan's uber-weird noise outfit Melt-Banana take the mainstage with Hex Machine at 8:30 p.m., $13. Plus Falls Church native and now Richmond-based newgrass singer Josh Small is in the Backstage tonight, with Tim Barry and The Wading Girl, for a paltry $8 at 8 p.m. >> Campus Progress is calling all summer interns and other young folks to head over to Science Club tonight for......

MONDAY: Leftover anger from last week's G8 Summit? Check out John Perkins at Politics and Prose tonight. He'll be discussing his newest book The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption, which details the shady deals behind U.S. foreign aid to developing countries. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Hurricane season is upon us yet again, and this August will mark the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact......

If you see emergency response vehicles zipping around town laden with folks shouting into walkie-talkies about evacuations and floods, don't be alarmed. Today Washington area officials are running their first ever joint hurricane response exercise. Federal workers, along with their counterparts from D.C., Maryland and Virginia are gauging the region's ability to deal with a watery disaster. While most associate hurricane-strength storms with the Gulf Coast and tropical climes, many vividly remember the destruction wrought......

MONDAY >> Anthony Pirog's (one of our recent Three Stars artists) many music outlets are coming together tonight at Iota. Head to Arlington's cozy club to hear rock music from The Bang. With Le Loup. $10, 8:30 p.m. >> Mark Mallman, Twin Cities veteran and spastic-rock-showman-turned-synth-pop-afficianado, plays DC9 with fellow Minneapolis rockers the Honeydogs in one of the week's best bargains. 8 bucks gets you a whole lot of rock and probably some ringing eardrums......

When we think of affordable housing in the region, we usually envision huge apartment buildings, such as those marching up 7th Street north of the Convention Center. Or we’ll think of the varying percentages of affordable units promised in the multitudes of luxury condo developments popping up all over our city, and often not delivered in the final construction. For the next several weekends in Silver Spring, you can get a close-up look at a......

Redskins Stumble out of Preseaon The Redskins dropped their fourth and final preseason game last night, losing to the Baltimore Ravens 17-10. The loss sealed the first winless preseason in Joe Gibbs' 24 years as a coach. Though common wisdom dictates the insignificance of the preseason, there should be cause for concern among Redskins fans. The team scored a meager 27 points over the 4 preseason games, their lowest total since 1961. Their first-team......

The Smithsonian Insititution announced Monday that it will install a Common Wireless Access System in phases over the next two years, a step which means both free wireless Internet and improved mobile phone reception in and around their museums. The announcement comes 2 years after non-profit Open Park began a push to provide Wi-Fi across the National Mall, which resulted in three hotspots in the area — a good start, but without the Smithsonian's cooperation......

Share Our Strength Benefit For Katrina Victims August 29 will mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, but clean-up, rebuilding, and resettling are still taking place. Charity group Share Our Strength will observe the date by holding Restaurants for Relief, an event in which restaurants will donate a portion of their proceeds to help recovery efforts and to end childhood hunger along the Gulf Coast. Almost 90 restaurants in the metro area plan to......

If you couldn’t get down to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras properly, look no further than Warehouse. The gallery is currently hosting Arty Gras, an exhibition to celebrate artists displaced by Hurricane Katrina and raise funds for the Habitat for Humanity Gulf Coast recovery efforts. The exhibition was organized by independent curator Beth Baldwin, who grabbed onto the idea after seeing offers of gallery space for artists whose shows were canceled after the storm.......

After a brave but fruitless fight, District officials today announced that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams' official blog has passed away. No services have yet been scheduled, and Williams was unavailable for comment at press time. City officials remained mostly quiet on the blog's passing, though one individual close to the mayor remarked, "Williams had a blog? Really?" Bloggers unofficially stick to the rule that a blog that goes without an update for 30 days or......

MONDAY >> Monday welcomes the Fictionista Book Tour to Washington, D.C., featuring readings from Josie Brown (True Hollywood Lies), Kayla Perrin (Gimme an O!) and Stephanie Lessing (She’s Got Issues). Good gravy! All that chicklit in one place? Does it get any better? Oh, people. It does. The event is taking place at the Hard Rock Café -- and that means Aerosmith-themed quesadillas. 999 E. St NW., 7 p.m. TUESDAY >> In her book, Nickel......

In an age when broadcast radio is increasingly homogenized and corporate, WAMU’s Hot Jazz Saturday Night is a refuge for those with an interest in vintage jazz, swing and big band from the '20s, '30s, and '40s. Host Rob Bamberger, whose record collection has taken over his basement and laundry room, has been laying down jazz knowledge every Saturday night from 7 to 10 p.m. since 1980. That makes 25 years — congrats to......

This one of those pictures that just makes you stop, makes you wonder, makes you want to ask, "Is that for real?" While we are not discounting the possibility that Council-member Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4) may be the favored candidate in the much sought after 8-15 age-group, we are guessing that someone's parents are taking next year's mayoral race just a step too far. Hopefully she didn't run into the hyper-active nine-year-old with the......

Kinkead Signs New Book in Dupont Cookbook fanatic? Kinkead's fanatic? Simply a food lover? Head to Best Cellars Dupont this Saturday for the 2 p.m. signing of Kinkead's Cookbook: Recipes from Washington D. C.'s Premier Seafood Restaurant by Chef Bob Kinkead himself. The book offers more than 120 recipes from his Kinkead's repertoire. We are eager to try our hand at some of these. Recreating Kinkead's cuisine at home will definitely make the dinner guests......

While we continue to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the disaster that just over a week ago brought untold death and destruction to New Orleans and other cities and town along the Gulf Coast, we are similarly overwhelmed by the generosity of Americans and the international community alike. Individuals, groups, and organizations have led the charge in the Washington metropolitan area with a variety of fundraisers, more of which we feature here: -- Head......

Written by DCist contributor Phil Long. While our attention remains focused on the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, many organizations in the District and around the country have worked tirelessly to bring attention to the plight of the Darfur region of the Sudan, whose residents have been subjected to coordinated attacks by marauding gangs sponsored, some say, by the Sudanese government. These series of attacks -- which have razed entire villages......

With the double benefit of a long weekend and sunny skies, area residents return to work with spirits and energy restored. But that feeling may be fleeting -- transportation experts warn that the first Tuesday after Labor Day is often referred to as "Terrible Traffic Tuesday," or T3 for short. Sandwiched somewhere between Manic Monday and T.G.I.F., T3 is the day that workers hit the roads, students at local universities return to campus, and school......

So, the unofficial close of summer has come and gone in a spectacularly gorgeous weekend. Agree? But we all know that living in the District not only means our dog days linger longer than August, but also that the best of 2005 is yet to come, with fall weather making its slow and graceful entrance in the next few weeks. Our thoughts this past week have been preoccupied with the devastation in the Gulf Coast.......

Washington is a city of symbols, be they of democracy, of death, of individual achievement, or of power. The District, while serving as a vibrant home to 600,000 residents, doubles as a reflection of America's resolve and commitment to the country's founding principles and those who have fought for them over the last 200 years -- Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Roosevelt, and legions of soldiers and civil rights activists that have furthered the cause of......

It's Labor Day weekend, and you thought everybody had gotten the hell out of Dodge City, hadn't you? Well, they probably have, and we're experiencing serious envy of anyone who's on a beach right now with a margarita in hand. But don't despair - there's still tons to do in D.C. this weekend, and we've rounded up the best of the best for you to do in a special extended version of Weekend Picks. But......

After a much-needed one week vacation from the world of transit, this column makes its triumphant return to all things car, bus, train, bike, and feet. If you get around with it, we cover it.......

We have all followed the increasingly depressing news from the devastated Gulf Coast, watching as parts of New Orleans slowly disappeared under the slowly rising flood waters. News now has it that New Orleans, a city of 485,000, is to be fully evacuated and remain empty for as long as four months as federal and state officials struggle to repair levees and suck water out of the bowl-shaped city. DCist can only ponder the toll......

She came, she went, she left destruction in her wake. Hurricane Katrina -- whose fierce winds and plentiful rains have left New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas partially submerged and reeling from the damage -- is continuing its way up through the continental United States, yet will thankfully avoid the Washington area. That's not to say we won't feel Katrina's impact in our own way, though. The Examiner today recognizes that District gas prices......

Sometimes you're in a Gulf Coast mood. You know, the kind of mood that compels you to do any number of things you'd normally avoid. Like wear a Hawaiian shirt, or drink mai tais, or listen to Jimmy Buffet. For those moments (and admit it -- you've had at least one, right?) there's Cantina Marina, located not on the Georgetown Waterfront, but on the water in Southwest -- one of the new epicenters for development......

The weather reports had DCist worrying about the tropical possibilities for this Thursday evening’s Launch Party/Happy Hour at The Reef in Adams Morgan. But it appears Mr. Ivan T. Terrible is taking his time to tarry in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico before making landfall in the United States, putting any potential rainfall, as all good Gulf Coast hurricanes are wont to bring to the mid-Atlantic region, on track for Friday. This means that......

DCist is giving notice that your weekend plans will be washed out if they involve being outdoors. Two tropical systems, Bonnie and Charley are staring down Florida's Gulf Coast. With a strong cold front parked approximately where the Appalachians are, that will send rain ... and a lot of it ... up toward Washington. While the storms probably won't generate much wind by the time they make their way to the Mid-Atlantic states, we'll still......