Danny Clinch's name is synonymous with rock photography. He has trained his camera on most of rock's royalty -- Dylan, Cash, Springsteen, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Radiohead and many, many more -- and come away with many of the artists' most iconic images. His work has appeared all over the world in publications like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, SPIN, The New Yorker and The New York Times, and Clinch is the official photographer for The Grammys and The Tibetan Freedom Concerts. And while his concert work is impressive, Clinch is best known for the incredible images he gets backstage and in the studio; Clinch has access that makes most other concert photographers (myself included) green with envy. more ›

Not every family of lizards gets to be immortalized in the annals of commerce, but the family gekkonidae, what you and I know as geckos, is just lucky like that. Eighteen species of the lucky lizards are on display in Geckos: Tails to Toepads at the National Geographic Museum. As the exhibit title suggests, there's something interesting to be found in every inch of these technicolor creatures. But they are certainly more than the sum of their parts, and not just because they eat nasty bugs that would otherwise devour us all alive. more ›

The winning question was: Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country? Do you know the answer? The final series of questions (and their answers) are in the video above. more ›

DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area more ›

DCist's guide to lectures and discussions in the D.C. area more ›

Attention photographers: the National Geographic Traveler is putting together a "user-generated photography gallery" of images from around Washington, D.C. They'll choose the best of those submitted and post them on their web site in a couple of weeks. Just submit your photos (as many as you want), with a description, to their Flickr pool, but tag your favorite five with "NGTDC." more ›

Welcome to Talk to Me, Baby, a new feature where we highlight the city's best talking events: the free, the cheap, and the spendy at the area's museums, galleries, and auditoriums. As always, stay tuned to Popcorn and Candy for film screenings and their related discussions, and to Reader, Meet Author for book talks. more ›

With all the love our readers show for the annual DCist Exposed Photography Show, we figured this was right up your alley. FotoWeek DC is a new photography festival with the backing of just about every single photography related person and organization in the metro area. Founded by National Geographic and local fave photo shop Chrome Imaging, the week-long event will feature exhibits in nearly every gallery and museum throughout the city, countless lectures and workshops, and a big photo contest open to the public, with the winners honored at a gala at NGS headquarters at the end of the week. more ›

National Geographic is kicking China Revealed this week, a series that centers around two museum exhibitions which run from today through September 7, and a film program paired to each exhibit. Tonight, there's a presentation to introduce the museum's exhibit on the early 15th century Chinese explorer Zheng He; Friday at noon, the museum screens a documentary following National Geographic photographer Mike Yamashida as he retraces many of Zheng's travels. And tomorrow, there's a presentation to introduce an exhibit featuring unprecedented photographs and video of the famed Shaolin Temple. The film program to accompany the Shaolin Temple exhibit is truly a treat, as National Geographic will screen a triple feature of three of the most famous films inspired by the temple. more ›

D.C.’s big art news arrived yesterday, when Artomatic announced the dates and location for their semi-annual massive and all-inclusive art exhibit. If you want to help organize the event, join them for an All Hands Meeting this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Capitol Plaza 1 building, located at 1st and M Streets NE. Artomatic is not until May 9, however, so get your art fix this week with the exhibits and events highlighted below. more ›

This Thursday, National Geographic Live! begins its third installment of free concerts from “The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad” program. Co-developed by Jazz at Lincoln Center and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the program's goal is to foster a cultural exchange in regions of the world that may have limited access to American music and culture. more ›

Last April I sold my elderly car for a few hundred dollars. I was tired of the expense of repairs, gas and insurance, no longer needed a vehicle for work, and the wide availability of car-sharing services in the D.C. metro area made the switch to no longer owning my own car seem easy and obvious. I hadn't regretted my decision for a minute -- until I got the following press release in my inbox... more ›

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: 2007 Washington Jewish Film Festival The Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center’s annual film festival has become one of the largest and longest running of the local festivals. This year’s program encompasses over 40 films, from 11 countries. Nearly half of the selections are films from Israel, in recognition of the nation’s 60th year. The event... more ›

>> Anacostia is in the running for an award from HGTV to come in and help the community complete revitalization projects. [Free Ride] >> Well, The Scott is back to gitcha now, boys! [Wonkette] >> Arlington County Police are saying they believe the person responsible for two recent gropings at the Rosslyn Metro station could be the same man who committed four plastic bag attacks earlier this year. [WTOP] >> I-95 was closed in... more ›

Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine are two filmmakers who call D.C. home. They've made a name for themselves as writers, producers, and directors of documentary films, often for National Geographic and television, but their latest project has raised their profile far beyond the recognition of their previous work. War/Dance, for which the pair take joint directorial credit, has earned the couple a mantle's worth of awards this year, including the documentary directing prize at... more ›

MONDAY: Peter Behrens will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Law of Dreams. Maybe Behrens can analyze our reoccurring dream where we keep getting lost while driving down some featureless freeway. Wait ... His book is about a young man roaming the Irish countryside in 1847? Good thing we read that before we asked about the part where we're naked. 7:30 p.m. TUESDAY: The one and only Dave Eggers will... more ›

>> The Blow, Saturday Looks Good to Me and Karl Blau are all at the Black Cat. 8 p.m., $12. >> The songs of Neil Young will be honored by the collective of local musicians known as Ragged Glory at the Velvet Lounge. Check out our full preview here. >> The aforementioned DieYuppieKickball.com is hosting its first initiation meeting tonight at Cosmos, the upstairs of Chief Ike's, at 7 p.m. Reads the email: "What?!... more ›

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: The Darjeeling Limited By now, five features into his career, it's likely you already have a strong opinion on Wes Anderson. Despite his tendency to borrow liberally from his own film and literary heroes, from Kubrick to Fitzgerald to the entire French New Wave, a Wes Anderson film feels like a Wes Anderson film from... more ›

>> There are so many festivals going on this weekend, we don't feel bad mentioning them a few times to make sure you get your butt off the couch to check out as many of them as you can. We'll have more on always anticipated Crafty Bastards later today, which is Sunday in Adams Morgan. The National Book Festival, where this writer is going to nerd it up, is Saturday on the Mall. Practice your... more ›

Neither Mozart nor Hockey Themed Washington works hard to burnish its dining credentials. D.C. fat cats who are literally fat need somewhere to eat, and they're not going to throw down lobbyist dollars for just any slop. No. D.C. is a dining destination, beckoning the up-and-coming chefs and their myriad foodie followers. People are noticing, too. From the New York Times to the National Geographic Traveler, we're a getting noticed -- enough so that a... more ›

A little reminiscent of a National Geographic time-lapse shot, this shot by chip py the photo guy of a statue on the Memorial Bridge really stood out. We've seen the statues fly by (or crawl by) many times, but the colors are surreal and bright and the man on the horse looks like an extra in 300. The light streaks above draw our eye up the shot too, and provide a weird contrast —... more ›

MONDAY: Gorky Park author Martin Cruz Smith will be at the Penn Quarter Olsson's to read from his latest, Stalin's Ghost. In the book, Moscow subway riders see the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Here in Washington, we settle for George Stephanopoulos. What a country! 7 p.m. Susan L. Shirk will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her book China: Fragile Superpower. Of course in China... more ›

If you're anything like us, you've been experiencing major geek covetousness ever since Google Maps launched its Street View functionality late last month. The feature (which may seem similar to past users of Amazon's A9.com) shows street-level photos of locations. Users can move smoothly from spot to spot, rotating their view and taking in the sights. Unfortunately, Google Maps' coverage of D.C. doesn't feature any of the blue outlines that signify Street View-equipped roads. But... more ›

>> Vandals armed only with a U-shaped bicycle lock and a sense of irony managed to trap about 40 commuters on the Virginia Railway Express Monday near Woodbridge, when they locked the metal gates from the pedestrian bridge at the Rippon station. The gates, which the VRE removed Tuesday, were originally put there to keep vandals out of the station. [AP via NBC4] >> Post columnist Courtland Milloy makes a compelling case for abolishing... more ›

>> Artomatic comes to a close this weekend, after five long weeks of inundating us with massive quantities of art, free performances, lectures, concerts, film series, demonstrations and workshops, and spirited community building that even your old summer camp counselor couldn't match. If you haven't gone down to Crystal City yet, the old Patent Office location is only a few blocks from the metro, and the art fair only rises up every two (sometimes three)... more ›

FRIDAY: >> Attention all nerds: This is like our Lollapalooza or something. First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World is an event being held tonight by National Geographic Live, which features some sort of "collaboration" between NPR's Neal Conan and Liane Hansen, the Celtic/early music crossover group Ensemble Galilei, and actor Bill Pullman. Together this crew will narrate excerpts from the journals of great explorers such as Jacques Cousteau, George Mallory, and Charles... more ›

No, these adorable critters don't have anything to do with the last post of the day. We just finished watching many hours of Planet Earth and are now looking for ways to make blogging "green". See, Al Gore, DCist loves Mother Nature and all her creatures. Well, most of them. >> We also love all sorts of maps. Now we've been informed that National Geographic's awesome array of maps are online. Let the cartographic... more ›

Chad Pregracke's excellent new book, From the Bottom Up, is a young man's memoir about cleaning up rivers, but it's also a powerful bildungsroman navigating a clash of ancient and modern worlds. Pregracke used to work full days walking along the bottom of the Mississippi river breathing out of a hose and picking up mussels. This job paid well for a teenager and had the added benefit of terrifying his mother. One day he got... more ›

Whether we make the mental connections or not, everything about our city is interrelated: • The health of the Anacostia and Potomac watersheds is directly affected by runoff from roads; • Our roads are designed and routed to ease our daily commute to get to and from jobs created by regional economic growth policy; • Growth is dependent on a reliable and expanding base of skilled workers; • Workers attracted by lively mixes of shops,... more ›

Hopes are high for the Baltimore Symphony and Marin Alsop, the first woman to be appointed Music Director of a major American orchestra. Last night at Strathmore, Washington got a taste of the adventurous programming we may expect from Alsop, who has made a name conducting contemporary music, especially by American composers. In a brief introduction to this program devoted to the music of Philip Glass, born in Baltimore 70 years ago this year, Alsop... more ›