Written by DCist contributor Lauren Jacob Premier D.C. chef José Andrés cuts an imposing figure, both in his culinary prowess and his Tony Soprano-like stature, but if you see him walking down the street, don't be afraid to give him a hearty hello and congratulate him on his new TV series "Made in Spain," which has begun airing on WETA at 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays. We caught up with the gregarious Andrés recently at a......

The last time I had my heart broken? When Brian Lamb, the founder and CEO of C-SPAN, decided back in 2004 to put an end to Booknotes after 16 years on the air. Sunday nights found Lamb spending an hour (an hour!) with a non-fiction writer (usually a historian, journalist or biographer), peppering them with questions about their latest book and providing viewers with background and insight into their subject and origins. Unlike most......

When it comes to who the D.C. Republican Party should side with in the 2008 presidential contest, the choice is obvious -- Mike Huckabee. Sure, the former governor of Arkansas doesn't have much of a chance of winning, but he's been consistent in his support of D.C. voting rights. In yesterday's All-American Presidential Forum on PBS, hosted by Tavis Smiley, it was Huckabee who backed voting rights for the District's 600,000 residents. In response to......

Drum roll please...here's a list of advertisers this week on DCist. Bookfest 2007 at the Library of Congress, which starts in 8 days! Books and Laura Bush! It's party time. Zipcar, because those highways are there for you to use them! War on PBS, because when you put Ken Burns and the word war together, you get a multi-show series on PBS. Look Me In the Eye, in bookstores on September 25th. Busted Tees, which......

>> Don't miss our full preview and interview with Bonde do Role, playing tonight at the Black Cat with Plastic Little and local experimental audio/visual artist Edie Sedgwick. $10, 8 p.m. >> >> DC9's got The Daybreak Line and The Beanstalk Library, who we recently profiled in a Three Stars piece, and Athens, GA's The Winter Sounds. $8, 9:30 p.m. >> I have vivid memories of watching the significantly creepy 1960 TV version of......

The early part of the week is looking a little light for shows, but after the Fourth things really get rolling through Sunday night. MONDAY >> After coming down with a case of "David Letterman throat" last week, Morrissey was forced to reschedule three shows, including his gig at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Right now it looks like NYC's loss is our gain, as we just recieved an email from the staff at Wolf......

Conventional wisdom, for many years, went that American audiences and British humour just didn't mix. Apart from legions of cultish fans who could quote Python chapter and verse, and PBS viewers glued to re-runs of Upstairs, Downstairs and Fawlty Towers, most American audiences seemed either to not get it, or just not care. But the recent pond-crossing successes of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais suggests that maybe tastes are changing on this side of......

FRIDAY: >> Baltimore's Fertile Ground return to 9:30 Club for a concert with collaborator Raheem DeVaughn called Let's Do It Again. Also singer Anthony David. 9 p.m., $22. >> Gallery Openings of Note: Maria Friberg opens her show, titled embedded, at Conner Contemporary, reception 6 to 8 p.m. That's embedded #4 at left. Also we checked out a preview of Colby Caldwell's new show, Small Game, at Hemphill Fine Arts on Wednesday, and definitely recommend......

Do strange sounds in your musty old Georgetown townhouse keep you up at night? Ever wonder who that bloody, transparent little girl is at the foot of your bed? Is George Washington, himself, sharing your bathroom? Who are you gonna call? Why, you'll call the CPRI (Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation), of course. With Halloween right around the corner, we thought it might be helpful to prepare for the horrors that await by speaking......

Campus Progress is determined to keep you busy. Last week they hosted an early peek at an episode of The Wire. Tomorrow they'll be continuing their advance screening M.O., offering an opportunity to watch an episode of the civil rights documentary Eyes On The Prize prior to its return to PBS later this fall. A screening of a twenty year-old documentary may not sound like a big deal, but in this case it is. Despite......

The National Symphony Orchestra gave its first official performance of the fall season last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, opening by tradition with a performance of the national anthem. Music director Leonard Slatkin struck exactly the right tone by opening not with a perennial audience favorite, but with a piece never performed by the NSO until now, William Walton's Partita for Orchestra (1957). It rocketed to a start in a blast of sound,......

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines. Houstonist announces their new Cops spinoff "World's Funniest Tazer Videos" and the possible cancellation of their pervs' "World's Grossest Bathroom Videos" and PBS trains cams on cows at, uhg, Mootube. Also,......

In case your swath of 70+ cable channels isn't doing the trick, and you happen to be looking for something District-grown with an international flavor, MHz Networks might satiate your appetite for non-stateside programming. Launched in 1983 and based inside the Beltway, MHz tends to hang out around the other publicly-funded stations on the channel spectrum. Lost in that ad-free bundle, for months we erred in skipping over them on the channel guide. Though they......

Attendees at this year's National Book Festival certainly heard the protests as the crowd marched by a mere two blocks away and helicopters circled overhead. They certainly saw the protestors, a number of who broke away from the anti-war events to hear from many of the country's notable authors. But the festival still seemed worlds apart from the other big event less than a mile away. Despite a full slate of weekend events and off-and-on......

-- If you haven't had enough fun playing around with the Los Angeles Times' wiki-enabled interactive editorial, take a look at John Daniszewski's dispactch from Tehran about charges of official manipulation in the recent elections ... and saying that "[n]ew doubts and divisions have come into view" regarding the Iraq war, Paul Richter tracks conservative North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones Jr. and his shifting stance on Iraq and how that's playing back home .........

Classical Music Agenda by DCist contributor Charles T. Downey of Ionarts If you have not done your civic duty and Taken a Friend to the Orchestra yet this month, Washington is not the place to try to make that happen in late May. We don't have much to suggest for your classical listening pleasure this week, but you can keep yourself informed by following our Classical Week in Washington column at Ionarts. FREE CONCERTS: >>......

Must-See-TV tonight, readers, so set your Tivo's for "A Company of Soldiers," a "Frontline" documentary which premieres on WETA and MPT at 10 p.m. The documentary offers an intimate and often moving look into the lives of the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Baghdad, during the month of November 2004. According to the NY Times' Alessandra Stanley tonight's documentary does not presage peace or quagmire in Iraq...Instead, a complicated war is broken down......

What has Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox been up to since she skipped town? Partying with New York media heavies, apparently. Gawker Media, the Wonkette mother ship, called our girl home for a small, A-list bloggers only shindig at the New York home of publisher Nick Denton a few days ago. (Hmm, perhaps our invitation got lost in the mail? C'mon, we're only a train ride away...) So what's the big occasion? Gawker reports that Ana......

Last Friday were were sad to hear of the passing of legendary actor and civil rights leader Ossie Davis. Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee, were recognized at the 27th Kennedy Center Honors in December. We'll remember him not only for his great acting but also the times when we saw him interviewed - including this powerful interview we saw him give with Bill Moyers on NOW. The news program Democracy Now! has dedicated today's......

There must be something about this time of year that winds cultural conservatives in our fair city a bit more tightly than usual. First, Dr. James Dobson, a conservative Christian activist, suggested at an inauguration event last week that SpongeBob Squarepants was featured in a "pro-homosexual video" that was to indoctrinate school children. After much liberal snickering, it turns out the whole thing might have been an innocent mix-up over the name of a group......

You may have seen people hawking newspapers in the last year outside Metro stations who said it was to "help the homeless" and thought it was just a scam. If they were selling copies of the Street Sense newspaper, think again: the people behind the paper say at least six formerly homeless vendors of the paper "now have apartments of their own, and more than two dozen have started part time or full time jobs......

CNN announced this morning that they've parted ways with the button down, bow-tied host Tucker Carlson and his show "Crossfire". There are conflicting reports over who left who first, and with any break up, each side insists they left first. The NY Times reports CNN ditching the host, and the Post's Howie Kurtz says Carlson already had one foot out the door. You shrewd, media savvy readers out there are no doubt pondering the......

Major networks across the board will sacrifice a crucial night of the November sweeps period in the name of civic duty. Election Night coverage starts at 8 p.m. on most broadcast networks and presumably continues on through the wee hours of the morning. Here's your handy-dandy guide to Election Night viewing. ABC News: Peter Jennings anchors Vote 2004 with the help of George Stephanopoulos and Terry Moran. Former Salon.com writer Jake Tapper will have regular......

It seems that with the runup to the elections, there has been so much focus on how the Bush administration has handled the past four years. Adding to the intense focus is PBS's highly acclaimed documentary series Frontline, which presents an in-depth look at the state of the American military establishment tonight at 9 p.m. on WETA. In collaboration with The Washington Post, the documentary, titled "Rumsfeld's War," promises to showcase a battle for control......

With PBS' announcement that it is moving to Crystal City, some talk in the local restaurant world is making DCist wonder what may be going on across the river. Crystal City may in fact have a heart beat. Now DCist doesn't want to ridicule the fine denizens of Crystal City, but just about anyone can admit that the area is filled with souless, architecturally bland residental and office towers all bisected by the elevated Jefferson......

Looking to meet some of your favorite authors, NBA stars, or characters from your favorite PBS kid's shows this weekend? The Library of Congress and first lady (and former librarian) Laura Bush bring the 2004 National Book Festival to the Mall on Saturday. Now in its fourth year, the festival features more than 70 writers from across the literary spectrum. Notables appearing include R.L. Stine, E.L. Konigsburg, Joyce Carol Oates, Clive Cussler, Azar Nafisi, Anna......

The Public Broadcasting Service will be moving their headquarters to Crystal City from Alexandria. The county of Arlington couldn't resist crowing about the move in a press release, boasting they'd be moving into the "heart of newly-revitalized Crystal City." Yet beneath the glowing news about "one of America’s preeminent places for living, visiting and doing business," there's a less rosy reality. PBS will be moving into some of the 1.4 million square feet vacated by......

Last week we had the pleasure of seeing Senator John Kerry and President Bush go man on man, in the first presidential debate. In fact, Zap2It said that the debate scored nearly 63 million viewers, and that's not counting the eight of you that watched it on PBS. Now, normally, we would cast a sideways glance at the vice presidential candidate debate, but the buzz is that this is one will actually be worth watching.......

Two noteworthy specials will air on WETA PBS-23 tonight related to the 9/11 attack on New York City. First will be what DCist has heard is a very good NOVA documentary about the World Trade Center attack titled "Why the Towers Fell" at 8 p.m. Second, at 9 p.m., is the premier of a new Frontline documentary titled "Sacred Ground" about the planning surrounding the site's reconstruction. Featured in the Frontline documentary is wrangling surrounding......