"I can't keep doing this on my own, with these....people," laments Daniel Plainiew, midway through Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film. That final word, "people," tumbles out of Daniel Day-Lewis' mouth like a piece of sour meat, rotting and foul-tasting. It's a defining moment for his character: as far as he's concerned, people are just no damn good. The problem is, he's just as much of a bastard as the rest of them. And try as......

Aside from donating to charity or saving for your child's college fund, the best use of $6.75 is the quarter-chicken platter with fries and salad at Skorpios Maggio's Family Restaurant (affectionately known as Skorpios) in Vienna.  Hot rotisserie chicken, dusted with a lemon peppery spice blend, served to you on a divided plate with thick cut steak fries and a simple lettuce salad covered generously in feta and dressed with oil and vinegar, and a......

The annual visit of the Mariinsky Theater's traveling opera troupe from St. Petersburg came a little early this year. The themes that unite the Kennedy Center double-bill of Verdi's Otello and Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades are self-destructive obsessions and tenor heroes who become villains. Who better to perform The Queen of Spades than the Mariinsky Theater, which hosted the world premiere of The Queen of Spades on December 19, 1890? The opera is thoroughly Russian,......

FRIDAY: >> Bay Area songstress Goapele’s (pictured) musical background is almost as diverse as her ethnic background. Born to a South African political exile father and a mother whose parents survived the Holocaust, she studied at the Berklee College of Music and later would form musical partnerships with the likes of hip-hop acts like the Hieroglyphics crew and E-40. However her 2005 release, Change It All, established her as especially talented when it comes to......

I love holiday photos like this, warm with just a hint of sparkle, rather than the garish no-holds-barred plastic Santa light display preferred by those with the festive spirit in overdrive. DC Jeff took this postcard perfect image somewhere on the Georgetown campus. Happy holidays indeed. Have you submitted your application for DCist Exposed 2008 yet? No time like the present! The 2007 winners are all over the place: mark your calendars for 6......

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......

The thinly veiled sexism oozing out of today's Examiner column by veteran local politics observer Harry Jaffe is hard enough to take, but to whomever thought up this gem of a headline, be they copy editor or author, DCist salutes your willingness to go boldly where no human beings in the 21st century were thought to be capable of going anymore. Yes, if the recent Office of Tax and Revenue scandal has taught us......

In the Internet age, far fewer people still regularly turn to a paper version of the yellow pages, but that doesn't mean several companies aren't still delivering phone books to homes and businesses in Washington every year. We spotted about 5-6 brand new Yellow Books on the sidewalk on 9th Street NW in Shaw (around the corner from DCist HQ) over the weekend, having been delivered to what are clearly boarded up and abandoned buildings......

There's always something special about last shows. Whether the final episode of a beloved television series, or the farewell tour of a band, or even just the closing show of a tour, the artists involved always seem to throw a little something extra into the mix. So what does that mean for someone like Ted Leo, who closed out his tour Saturday night at the 9:30 Club, for whom giving roughly 210% at any......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on DCist. Dewars Repeal Day, because you shouldn't take the right to have a drink for granted. Go Eight, a Hanukkah party on December 8th at Sixth & I. Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield's book about women, music, and love. Busted Tees, where they've got naughty holiday-themed shirts. If you're interested in advertising on DCist or any other site in our......

To celebrate the release of Electric Grace: Still more Fiction by Washington Area Women tonight, editor Richard Peabody and ten of the book’s forty-two contributors will be reading selections from their work at Politics & Prose tonight at 7 p.m. Faye Moskowitz, a memoirist, poet, short story writer and professor, will read from her story “Completo (A Triptych),” from the journal, Story Quarterly. Professor Moskowitz—or just Faye, as she would have it—grew up in Detroit......

>> It's the first night of Hanukkah, so if you're not celebrating with family and friends at home, consider catching the Sinai Mountain Boys, a Maryland combo that melds the speedy strumming and twanging of bluegrass with Orthodox Jewish melodies. They'll be offering an hour of unique sounds for free beginning at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. >> The Washington Jewish Film Festival presents Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer's Arranged, the......

Chatty Cathys Warren Rojas of Northern Virginia Magazine was on Rockwell this week shilling his new chat, Grill Warren. Do we not have enough food chats/chogs/Q&As in this town? I guess it's an alternative if you can't get your question answered by one of the three Ts, but this is getting a little out of hand. Or maybe DCist is behind the curve on this one, and we should be starting our own chat. But......

As wine professionals, this is the time of year when we go into overdrive helping you, the consumer, fulfill all of your wine needs for parties and gift giving. As wine lovers, we relish being able to share our love of wine with others. We know that buying wine anytime can be an overwhelming an experience, but possibly more so now that you have to cover your family, friends, co-workers, and a mystery person whose......

>>Dinosaur Jr. just can't stop re-uniting. Their relatively recent comeback album, Beyond, was a solid return to form, and despite the years, these guys still bring it with their feedback-drenched power-trio jams. An odd combination of opening band names: Awesome Color and Dead Confederate. At the Black Cat, $20, 8 p.m. The Woggles -- that ageless bunch of garage-dwelling retro-rockers from Georgia -- plays DC9. They'll be joined by D.C.'s terrific purveyors of garage,......

MONDAY >>Satisfy your cheese cravings as former American Idol star (and Richmond, VA native) Elliot Yamin plays the 9:30 Club, with the Last Goodnight and Josh Hoge. $25, Doors at 7 p.m. >>Australian pop singer Ben Lee -- he of the short-lived Bens and "Catch My Disease" moderate fame -- comes to Alexandria's Del Ray neighborhood to play the Birchmere. Joining him is are Cary Brothers. $19.50, 7:30 p.m. TUESDAY >>Dinosaur Jr. just can't stop......

MONDAY: Peter J. Gomes, pastor of Harvard’s Memorial Church, will be at Politics and Prose to read from his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. Gomes believes Christians should be heeding the messages of Jesus, not objectifying the man. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Washington Post literary critic Michael Dirda wants you to know it's OK to love Fowler's Modern English Usage. How else would you learn that the "n" in damning, when it means "fatally conclusive,"......

The mid-November start to the NCAA basketball season tends to get lost in the universe of sports coverage. This is probably due to the staggered opening nights around the country, but can also be attributed to competition with other sports -- college football entering its stretch run, the NFL in midseason, even the NBA's opening weeks garner more attention than college hoops. We're not about to let this exciting time slip through the cracks. With......

Maybe we're cheeseballs, but we love the Annual Turkey Ceremony, the moment when the president "pardons" a lucky turkey (plus an alternate) who then becomes the official National Thanksgiving Turkey and gets to spend the rest of its days on some farm at Disneyworld or something like that. Sure, it's capricious and cutesy, but who cares! Turkeys are funny looking, and presidents posing with turkeys are even funnier. This year will mark the 60th anniversary......

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......

To say Stevie Wonder is a good artist would be an understatement. Over five decades, Wonder has amassed a catalog that not only includes over 30 albums but numerous songwriting and production credits. Fans in the District were treated last month to a two-and-a-half hour trip through a slew of rhythms and emotions. Wonder’s musical mastery has touched people worldwide, probably no two more than Brooklynites Bobbito Garcia and DJ Spinna. Both have made names......

>> Open City, the coffeehouse, diner and bar in Woodley Park, is celebrating its 2nd birthday tonight by offering diners their choice of a free cup of Tryst blend coffee, a glass of champagne, or a piece of chocolate birthday cake. >> Homegrown online fashion purveyors Unsung Designers are heading to New York, but tonight they'll be hosting a final D.C. trunk sale from 6 to 9 p.m. at 2412 18th Street NW in......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: War/Dance Sometimes you need an antidote before the poison even arrives. Next week Hollywood releases yet another of those diabetic-shock-inducing films about musically gifted youngsters and how they can be an inspiration to us all, designed to make soccer moms everywhere weep into their hankies. One week prior to that, though, comes a documentary from......

>> A solid small local show at the Red and the Black tonight, with the pleasing rock of The Charm Offensive, Cheverly Hot Noodle, and Baltimore's Lawnchair. $8, 9:30 p.m. >> It might be easy to dismiss Galactic as some frat boy-friendly jam band, but the funk and jazz-influenced quintet are practically royalty in their hometown of New Orleans, and tonight they'll perform with a series of well-respected MCs in support of their latest......

The interminably delayed Capitol Visitor Center took one small step toward becoming a reality yesterday, as the AP reports that the U.S. House of Representatives voted to name the largest room in the new center Emancipation Hall. The room would be named in honor of the slaves who helped build the U.S. Capitol. The House passed the bill 398-6 on Tuesday. The U.S. Senate will now consider the bill, which is unlikely to be defeated......

We love andertho's HDR treatment of this firehouse on New Jersey Avenue near the Capitol. The colors are so vibrant, with the spotlight focused on the fire truck in the center, ready to roll. EXIF.......

Whether or not you were actually part of the 1960s, if you are a Beatles fan or, well, obsessed like some of us, then consider heading down to the Music Center at Strathmore tonight for Rain: The Beatles Experience, a tribute band that takes its audience on a trip down memory lane to a time when four lads from Liverpool tried to show the world that there's nothing funny about peace, love and understanding. The......

>> "Japanese Action Comic Punk" band PEELANDER-Z hits DC9 tonight, along with Massachusetts power-poppers My So-Called Friend, Lights Resolve and up and coming locals The City Veins. $8. >> The Lisner Auditorium is hosting Malian traditional guitarist Vieux Farka Toure (son of the late great Ali Farka Toure) and Tinariwen, a band of musicians from the Sahara who meld North Malian guitar stylings with blues, middle–eastern, reggae and rock influences. 8 p.m., $15-$45. >>......

So where does Anthony Bourdain – chef, writer, traveler - spend his night after bumping elbows with six of D.C.’s top chefs? Unsurprisingly, at Ben’s Chili bowl. Keeping true to his inclinations for “adventurous” eating, Anthony Bourdain visited famed Ben’s Chili Bowl Tuesday night after having MC’ed D.C.’s annual Capital Food Fight. “I loved it, it’s the kind of food I like,” responded Bourdain to a question during the Q&A session of his sold-out talk......

Despite the cold, we have to admit this looks like a lot of fun. A little white water kayaking should get that heart racing to the point where you probably don't notice the frigid waters anymore. We love how Flickr user KJ Grabowsky manages to make the kayaker almost an afterthought, nearly hidden in the frothy waters that threaten to swallow him/her whole. EXIF.......