At this point in December, holiday concerts and Handel's Messiah have completely hijacked the classical music schedule. Here are a few other events, not all of which avoid the spirit of the season. After this post, the Classical Music Agenda will take its end-of-the-year hiatus, to return in the New Year. >> On Tuesday, the final concert sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society this calendar year features young violist Jennifer Stumm and Finghin Collins at......

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......

We didn't come into this week eight matchup with the undefeated New England Patriots without some degree of hope. It's been suggested that someone has to beat New England this year. And we seem to recall that Tom Brady had not yet beaten us in his career. And Gibbs was out, doing his expectations management act, downplaying our chances, which he always does. And we were asked to compare this matchup to Michigan and App......

>> D.C. United and Chivas Guadalajara renew their budding rivalry this evening. The match is part of the Copa Nissan Sudamericana, a 34-team invitational tournament featuring the best clubs of South America and several North American teams looking to crash the party. The match could be one of the most entertaining, competitive affairs this season. United aims to atone for their first round exit from the tournament two years ago; they also seek to......

FOUND Magazine has a knack for revealing the beautiful underbelly of America, the forgotten parts of our everyday lives. Highlighting things like the hateful note you left the person parked in your precious parking spot, your laundry list of to-dos, that love note you didn’t find the courage to send, or those rejection letters that you didn’t want to hold onto, FOUND is the curated hamper for everything not worth collecting. That is unless you......

By no means am I strictly an NFL guy. When the lights dim after the Super Bowl each year, I seamlessly move with the seasons into the maelstrom of college hoops and then the long, drawn-out, slow-motion marketing fantasia that is the NBA. Over a lifetime, I’ve soured on baseball but stayed constant to soccer, the sport I participated in myself as a child, with engrossingly mediocre results. But then, the NFL comes around again......

Back when Napster was all the rage, big name artists were up in arms because their material was being made available for free to whoever wanted it wherever a computer with Internet access existed. On the other hand, if a musician wanted to get mass distribution on the cheap, Napster and similar programs were a godsend. Detroit crooner Dwele’s career is a testament to that. Recorded mostly in his bedroom, Dwele’s Rize demo was highly......

John G. Hanhardt has been working as a consulting curator on film and media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). He’s had an influential career as one of the pioneering curators of media art in North America, helping shape the way museums look at and receive new media within their galleries and collections -- all stemming from his perspective of film’s influence on art and culture in the 20th Century. Hanhardt grew up in......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Just two days and counting until Unbuckled 6 is officially upon us, D.C. To whet your appetites a bit, we've asked both bands to answer a few hard-hitting questions leading up to their performance at DC9 this Wednesday. Today we bring you wisdom from The XYZ Affair's Alex Feder, and the band's latest music video — which is completely and totally awesome, if the words "physical challenge," Pete, Ferguson or Budnick mean anything to you.......

The United States Botanic Garden is a favorite summer destination, and the list of reasons to visit has gotten longer. In a recently opened exhibit, Celebrating America’s Public Gardens, the nation's most important public gardens have sponsored mini-displays in two sections called Green Today, Growing Tomorrows (in the National Garden, at the Mall end of the grounds) and A Sense of Place (on the Conservatory Terrace, facing Capitol Hill). In the latter exhibit, each garden's......

Last time we live blogged the House debate on District voting rights, things didn't go too well. We're hoping for a bit of an improvement today. From what we've heard on the Hill, debate kicks off at 10:30 a.m., and the legislation has been split up into two separate parts -- one covering the actual voting seats both D.C. and Utah would receive and the other dealing with the minor increase in annual spending the......

FRIDAY: >> The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception offers its annual Christmas Concert for Charity tonight. The Basilica's professional choir (featuring our very own DCist Charles!) will perform, followed by the choirs and orchestra of Catholic University. Admission is free, with a free-will donation to benefit the Spanish Catholic Center, a haven for immigrants to the Washington, D.C., area since 1967. The center provides services at locations in Mount Pleasant and......

Rugby fans, rejoice! This Sunday, the Embassy of New Zealand presents the Tenth Annual Ambassador's Shield Match at Trinity College. When it comes to rugby, the Kiwis represent: the New Zealand All-Blacks, currently the top-ranked team in the world, is the game's most legendary team. Maria Vastola, the Manager of the Mid-Atlantic Rugby Football Union (MARFU) Women's Select Side, tells us point blank that the Shield Match is "highest quality rugby you will get in......

What happened to my Americana? Somewhere out there, crotchety old folkies, scruffy bluesmen, and maybe even an early alt. country pioneer or two are listening to Califone and wondering the same thing. And it’s true – this may not be your parents’ roots music, but we like it that way. Sunday night at Iota, even stubborn traditionalists would have a hard time denying the delicate picking and mild harmonies of “Michigan Girls” – though they’d......

Two years ago, I heard an interesting piece on public radio about a one-woman play that was in the middle of a critically successful run at Manhattan Ensemble Theater. I had missed the introduction of the segment but listened raptly as the author, whose voice sounded very familiar, described how she had come to write a show about the lives of Iraqi women during the American military occupations. My jaw hit the floor at the......

By DCist contributor Joelle Seligson Zach Condon, a multi-instrumentalist from Albuquerque, has named his band Beirut. His debut album is called Gulag Orkestar – an invented orchestra of the Soviet slave labor camps – but he doesn't sing in Russian. And though he’s a 20-year-old musician (with underground fame to spare), he didn’t dub himself after a drinking game. Condon’s Southwestern roots are a most unlikely origin for a band where Balkan folksongs and gypsy......

Twenty-four-year-old actor and writer Josh Lefkowitz is sleeping on a couch in Columbia Heights these days, but he's hardly down on his luck. After leaving D.C. last year in search of performance opportunities in New York, he's found himself in the back warm embrace of the District, this time in the form of the Capital Fringe Festival, where he is performing his first monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start......

I usually respond to the miserable summers in Washington by visiting friends and family in dryer, cooler climates. At the moment, I am writing from a cottage on Coldwater Lake in southern Michigan, but at several points along the road, people who have seen my D.C. license plate -- some of them probably the first time they have seen one -- have asked the same question. Why does the D.C. government put "Taxation without......

We knew that speeding tickets were unusually common in the District, we knew that the city was making some decent bank off of the violations, and we even suspected racism, or at least wardism, in the placement of automated speed cameras. But just in case you leadfeet had begun to forget the danger of motoring quickly through D.C., we now have the National Motorists Association to remind us. From their website:Nothing can ruin a vacation......

Over the last few weeks we've been highlighting some of the proposals coming into the Solving D.C. Problems website, an initiative launched by the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice earlier this month to encourage residents to identify local problems and propose solutions. Today we focus on two ways to make the District a more entertaining city. The first proposes that the city invest in its own climbing wall: The city owns the historic......

So, in case you hadn't heard, George Mason is in the Final Four. As an 11-seed and member of the Colonial Athletic Assocation, the Patriots are the natural underdogs heading into Indianapolis. But in a tournament full of upsets, with four unlikely combatants -- Mason, UCLA, LSU, and Florida -- left standing, it's absurd to heavily favor one team or heavily discount the chances of another. This Final Four is the toughest to handicap in......

Three days ago George Mason was hoping to get their first ever NCAA Tournament victory. Now, after beating the UNC Tarheels 65-60 on Sunday, they are preparing for the Sweet 16 and a matchup with Wichita State. Down by 14 in the first half, Mason used an aggressive defense that forced a young UNC team into repeated turnovers and bad shots while taking advantage on the offensive end. The Patriots rode big men Will......

When George Mason's name was called on Selection Sunday, it turned more than a few heads (including DCist's). They were included over major conference clubs like Cincinnati and Florida St., and conference foe Hofstra, who had just beaten the Patriots in the CAA semis. They would also be playing without Tony Skinn, their second-leading scorer, who was suspended one game for punching a Hofstra player. Friday night in Dayton, Ohio, they proved they belonged, coming......

For George Mason, Selection Sunday was a relief. For George Washington, it was the worst-case scenario. The Patriots -- a bubble team thanks to two recent losses to Hofstra -- didn't have to sweat too long on Selection Sunday, as they were named the 11 seed in the second bracket announced. This was much to the dismay of CBS basketball announcer Billy Packer. The Patriots' regional will be played in Washington, but GMU has plenty......

Supporters of President Ronald Reagan tried to name a street in the District after him. But failing at that, they've opted for the next best thing -- dedicating a day to his legacy in Virginia. The Washington Times is reporting today that squeaky-clean Republican activist Grover Norquist submitted a request to Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's Office of Constituent Services that February 6 -- the Gipper's birthday -- be designated "Ronald Reagan Day." Kaine politely declined,......

This week in music, love is in the air and reality TV invades the District. MONDAY >> Kick off your week with the GZA and the RZA as the Wu Tang Clan works the 9:30 Club tonight, Shaolin style. If you weren’t able to get tickets to the earlier sold out show, a second later set has been added as part of the ODB Tribute Tour for $50 a ticket. First show -- 7 p.m.......

MONDAY We’re guessing that our readers probably have at least a passing familiarity with Ana Marie Cox and at least one of her two millennium straddling web-based glories: Suck and Wonkette. Well, Cox is leaving it all behind for content that won't be found in your RSS feed: her debut novel, Dog Days, is out and she will be dishing and signing tonight at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., 7 p.m. TUESDAY You......

Yes, bloggers have families too. DCist will be publishing on a lighter schedule for the next few days as we tear ourselves away from our T1 lines and wireless connections to spend some quality face time with our loved ones and of course, stuff ourselves silly. For our part, DCist staff will be scattered all across the country, from rural Tennessee to sunny LA via some time spent in North Carolina, Toledo, Ohio (think there......

In late October the major musical groups in Washington -- the Washington National Opera and National Symphony Orchestra -- take a break from performing for a couple weeks until November. You might think that their absence would mean a reduction of concert volume, but this is not really the case. In fact, we have a lot to tell you people about for the next two weeks, and without opera and symphony, we may even get......