While there are some great shows coming up in January, this week is still subject to holiday doldrums. Here are a few shows to check out. >> Tomorrow, vocalist/pianist Mose Allison comes to Blues Alley to begin a four night stand with daily 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. sets. It is common for touring jazz acts to hire local rhythm sections, and concert goers will be treated to two of D.C.'s finest in bassist Tommy......

Sure, Harriette Walters might have stolen upwards of $44 million from the District's coffers, but at least she wasn't stealing directly from low-income school children. According to a WTOP report this morning, District officials have arrested and charged a city official with submitting false expense reports totaling $11,385 for big bills at local restaurants and strip clubs. Emerson Crawley, a program manager at After School for All at Shaw Junior High School, allegedly spent the......

Last week, the Fenty administration announced an aggressive plan calling for the closure of 24 schools within the District of Columbia Public Schools system. Parents and concerned members of the community are now being invited to attend a series of public meetings where they can raise concerns directly with Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso. We've posted the full schedule below. Wards 1, 2 & 6: *Monday, Dec. 10 from......

A happy Friday to you, Washington. Hopefully you all made it in to work on time despite Metro having reduced the speed of their rail cars in several areas this morning. Speed restrictions were in place until 8:10 a.m. along portions of the Orange line in Maryland and Virginia, the Red line from Union Station to Silver Spring and from Shady Grove to Grosvenor, and the Green line from Branch Avenue to Congress Heights......

Via Silver Spring, Singular, we find this amusing/embarrassing video spoof based on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air put together by Darryl Williams, the new principal of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. Back in October, the Washington Post ran a profile on Williams as he transitioned into his new job at Blair, taking over for popular former principal Phillip Gainous. From the looks of things, Williams is already making his mark on......

One need not dig too deep into our city’s jazz scene before coming across the name Thad Wilson. Since coming to D.C. in 1997, Wilson has become a mainstay in the jazz clubs of U Street and beyond by consistently performing with passion, intensity, and consummate artistry in a variety of settings. In addition to his own considerable abilities, his groups feature some of the finest players in the D.C. area. A native of......

Mayor Adrian Fenty, Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso announced their plans to "right-size" D.C. public school system today that will include the simultaneous closure of 24 schools. School closures have been high on the to-do list for several years now as student enrollment has dropped from 55,000 to an estimated 49,600 students this school year. The new school closure plan differs from a previous one offered by former Superintendent......

Good morning, Washington. It's news of the weird day today on DCist, as the Post tells the bizarre story of two 2nd-year engineering students from U-Va. who have been charged with the kidnapping of a man in Tysons Corner and demanding $500,000 in ransom. Both the two kidnappers and the victim are Chinese nationals who had been living with host families in Virginia while attending college. Police arrested Guanyu Lu and Baichuan Shu, both 19,......

The name may be unfamiliar, but the players behind Club Tiger Promotions are highly recognizable to any one who follows the D.C. music scene. Local artists Carol Bui and Jay Smith of Middle Distance Runner have started an all-ages venue, The Lab in Alexandria, which will both give under-age bands a place to play with their more seasoned peers and serve as an environment where, as Bui puts it, "kids feel totally comfortable and safe......

Civil rights leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and others are gathering with supporters on Freedom Plaza at 10 a.m. this morning to march to the Justice Department in a "March Against Hate Crimes." NBC4 says that organizers hope the march will bring attention to racism and recent hate crimes against African Americans that have been popping up around the country. The march was also designed to bring attention to the Jena......

Thanks to Mike DeBonis over at City Desk, today we find that the District's official website has been revamped. The site -- dc.gov -- is now less cluttered, and as DeBonis notes, no longer boasts the smiling mug of the mayor in the upper left-hand corner. Unfortunately, the same online care has not extended to all branches of local government -- the official website for the D.C. Council still looks like something that was put......

It took Joe Gibbs a few minutes to get to his point, but after only a couple cursory questions, he was able to say that, yes, the guys sure did “play their guts out” yesterday. It’s become a mantra of his, as though we’re rooting for a team of underdog high school kids and what matters isn’t whether they win or lose, but how they play the game. No matter the futility, the mind-boggling play......

>> Four D.C. firefighters were injured while battling a rowhouse fire at 619 4th St. NE this afternoon. [WTOP] >> A Jewish first-year GWU student and reporter for The Hatchet has found a series of swastikas drawn on her door. [The Hatchet] >> The leaders of a National Institutes of Health program recruiting minority D.C. high school students for science careers are disappointed that representatives of D.C. schools failed to show up for a......

This Thursday marks the start of the Fall Festival of Indian Arts, a program that is now in its fourth installment. This year's festival is entitled Celebrating Freedom, in honor of the 60th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence. Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh & Co., a local dance company, is staging the event and its mission is to mirror the modern South Asian experience by presenting traditional Indian dance forms in tandem with modern stylings. The......

If there are two things most people know about WTOP Political Analyst Mark Plotkin, it's that one, he's not very tech-savvy, and two, he's passionate aboout District voting rights. So passionate, it seems, that he even got himself kicked out of the White House yesterday. According to fellow WTOP reporter Mark Segraves' account of the incident, Plotkin, along with the rest of the D.C. press corps and various local elected officials, attended an event at......

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......

Last week we pointed out a Hollywood Reporter story that says there's a FOX television show in development inspired by the life of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Lanier's life is certainly the stuff of a good drama -- being a 39-year-old single mother who dropped out of high school after getting pregnant at 14, only to work her way to the top to become D.C.'s first female police chief, can't have been easy. Yesterday......

Good morning, Washington. We always thought it might be sort of fun to suggest something totally off the wall about President Bush, like that he might, oh, hate your children and want them to die sick and alone. Now that he's gone ahead and confirmed it, it's hard to know where to go from here. Is there anything worse than sick and dying children? How about, President Bush is in league with the devil? While......

We mentioned the nearly completed documentary film about the award-winning Ballou High School marching band, called simply Ballou, in a previous, less up-beat post about some fights that broke out there during the first week of the school. The film is still in its final post-production stages, but while the filmmakers are busy mixing audio tracks, the student musicians who are featured in the film are getting ready for a visit from The Ellen......

Compiled by DCist Contributors Josh Kramer and Sarah Stonesifer The Eagle - American: >> AU is fine-tuning their free HIV testing program to accommodate students' schedules. They've also switched from an anonymous testing program to a confidential one. The changes aim to bring the school in line with the District government's HIV testing initiative. >> The American University bus drivers were approved by the Undergraduate Senate to have their own union, a debate that had......

DCist is proud to be the official media sponsor of Cultural Tourism DC's free event this Saturday, Sept. 29: WalkingTown DC offers a wealth of free walking tours all day long to get Washingtonians out and discovering new things about their city and neighborhoods. The Temperance Tour, hosted by volunteer Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition Hangover, begins at the Cogswell Temperance Fountain at 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW at 1 p.m. and wraps......

In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech earlier this year, it's been reported all over the world today that two 17-year-old students were shot in an incident at Delaware State University last night. Both students, a male and a female whose names have not been released, were originally from the Washington, D.C. area. The male student is in stable condition, but the female’s injuries are listed as serious. The campus remained locked-down today......

All of the DCist editors get hundreds of press releases every week, but Music Editor Amanda Mattos and I probably get more than most. We're always happy to receive information from publicists about events or stories affecting the D.C. metro area -- they often make our jobs easier, in fact. But fairly often, we receive press releases that, to put it lightly, cause us to question the mental faculties of certain publicists. For months now,......

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 2007 edition of The Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, D.C.'s largest music festival, got off to a glowing start with last night's opening gala, held at the Inter-American Development Bank. The show was a bit delayed due to some technical difficulties with the piano, but the organizers wisely chose to hold the curtain in order to fix the problem because, as festival executive producer Charlie Fishman told the audience, "If the musicians be happy, then......

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty may be seen by his constituency as young, technologically savvy and constantly making personal appearances at even the smallest neighborhood events. But unlike his pal up in New York, rarely can he be seen riding public transportation, preferring to be whisked around town in his big, black Lincoln Navigator. And we're willing to concede that it probably makes more sense for the most part, seeing as how Fenty needs to......

Good morning, Washington. Even if you don't plan to do anything with your day like attending a memorial event or volunteering, it's rather difficult to forget what day it is today -- every time you see the date Sept. 11 on a credit card slip or memo, you're going to be reminded. The Post has a big interactive feature up on the creation of the Pentagon Memorial, which is scheduled to open in one......

Remember that first week of college? Amid the excitement of all the new people, new classes, new books, a new life, was the hope. The hope that you were embarking on an exciting journey that would make you into someone brand new. The hope that as you left high school and your parents behind, you could finally become the person you always knew you were meant to be. The hope that this was a fresh......

[Updated]: So much music, so little time. While tomorrow's This Week In Jazz column will preview this year's fantastic Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, there is even more jazz to be had for those who can't wait that long. This Saturday, September 8, the 17th Annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival will take place at Gateway Park from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. On the same day, D.C.'s Maryland suburbs get their own jazz celebration in the form......

They’re baaaaack. The area’s theater companies, that is. September marks season opener time for quite a few groups around town. Here are some of the highlights: This weekend kicks things off with the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage festival. Get a free first look at some of the new plays premiering around town this season. Lots of stuff looks interesting -- a new take on Kafka's The Trial from Catalyst, Ken Ludwig's version of The......