Everybody's favorite Portland-based literary music makers, The Decemberists, have had to cancel their Long And Short Of It tour, just two dates in. One of the band members has been ill, and as it turns out, hadn't gotten as well as they'd hoped in time to tour. That includes the expansive four-night residency they'd scheduled at the 9:30 Club for this weekend. If you'd already bought tickets, you can get a refund at your......

It's rare that any of the well-read political blogs based here in Washington take on issues that fit within DCist's mandate to stick mainly to local issues, but when they do, boy howdy, they can really make a mess of things for themselves. The American Prospect's Ezra Klein has already issued a mea culpa for a post he put up late last night on his personal blog, which wondered why there aren't more amenities for......

There was quite a bit of discontent going on in the comments section over our post yesterday regarding Spoon's canceled 9:30 Club shows. Imagine our surprise when the band's front man, Britt Daniel, graciously added his voice to the discussion to let us know what happened. Hi guys I first heard about this situation last week while we were traveling in Europe. There was some misunderstanding on my part from the beginning...I was told that......

>> The Black Cat's backstage will be a bit twangy tonight, as The Starlingtons stop by to play some of their alt-bluegrass with Portland Oregon’s folksy Casey Neill. 9 p.m., $7. >> One of the weeks few interesting author appearances is tonight at Olsson's in Dupont Circle, when Pushcart Prize-winning writer Katherine Taylor stops by to read from and sign copies of her debut novel, Rules for Saying Goodbye. 7 p.m. >> It's possible......

Monday >> The Starlingtons may not seem like your typical Black Cat band, but they are breaking the boundaries of traditional country/bluegrass. Tonight they’ll be on the back stage with Portland Oregon’s Casey Neill and his own folk/punk rock fusion. 9 p.m., $7. >> In the mood to try something new? Chicago’s post-punk New Harbour has been around for a few years now, but just moved to the District. They’re playing their first show tonight......

>> Administrative law judge Roy Pearson formally filed a motion to have the judge reconsider her verdict his appeal today in his $54 million lawsuit against Custom Cleaners over a misplaced pair of pants. [AP] >> In case you didn't already know it, global climate change means we're all totally effed. [WaPo] >> Which is a better bargain: The Nationals, or Butterstick? [13th Floor] >> Former Maryland Terp Steve Francis celebrated with his agent......

Last night at the NBA Draft, the West got better by picking some young talent (Greg Oden to Portland, Kevin Durant to Seattle) and the East got better by trading for talent (Zach Randolph to New York, Ray Allen to Boston). The Wizards got better by selecting USC shooting guard/small forward Nick Young. Young averaged just over 17 points per game last year at SoCal and is known for his mid-range jumper and fearless......

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......

The Humane Society of the United States has just released a new Humane Index of U.S. Cities. The site includes rankings for the top 25 most populous cities in the country, broken down by categories like number of retail shops that sell fur, or ratio of wildlife watchers to hunters, all presented in a pretty nifty interactive format that allows you to sort by category and compare one city to another. So how does D.C.......

D.C. has one, Chris Rock joked about them and there are entire books about them: streets named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday CNN posted an article about streets named for the civil rights leader, saying there are at least 777 in the country. The article says that Rock's joke and the stereotype about King streets, that they're poor and dangerous, may not be true. It quotes Matthew Mitchelson, a University of Georgia......

Forget any anger and antipathy you may have felt towards David Stern and ABC for their draconian TV policy. Trust me, you should be happy this game was blacked out locally. If you didn't see Sunday's disappointing 94-73 Wizards loss to Portland, you didn't miss much. Despite his threats, Gilbert Arenas didn't score 50 points. Not even close. The Wizards as a team didn't break 50 until the fourth quarter. The team played lackadaisically......

Amanda Mattos contributed to this post. A recent tip from Dave at Indiefolkforever lead us to a rather unflattering portrait of our fair city. Norfolk & Western, a Portland band that visited D.C. last month, apparently didn't have a very nice time playing DC9 or visiting the U street/Shaw neighborhood in Northwest D.C. As part of a tour journal posted on Local Cut, the band wrote: Washington DC proved to be a less pleasant experience......

Monday >> Not every band can pull off the feat of traveling with and playing a turn of the century Vittrolio Grammaphone, playing the saw, or convincing you that the theramin is a real instrument. But Portland band Norfolk and Western seem to be bear this burden with ease and a bit of quirk. This band plays a mix of folksy, whimsical and occassionaly dark rock music, using an eclectic array of instruments and revolving......

By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell The pseudo sub-genre of schizo-pop that the Fiery Furnaces made well-publicized if not so much well-liked culminated – at least for this reviewer – with Architecture in Helsinki’s second full-length album, In Case We Die. To call the two groups similar perhaps isn’t fair; their most basic common aesthetic is a lack of one in particular. But for my money, Architecture are the more playful of the two, their shouts......

Barcelona, the sparkly new EP from Virginia’s Soft Complex transcends easy genre labeling. Containing three original tracks and their remixes, one could (and this one does) describe the disc as offering the best of Ben Gibbard. Ben who? Why Ben Gibbard, the force behind indie darlings The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie. Like the beloved Portland quartet, Soft Complex explores love, loss and lost love. Taking a quasi-literary apprach, the songs feel......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

We've mentioned it briefly before, but several readers have written in to ask us to comment further, and we have to say that this is now officially fairly ridiculous. On Saturday the Post ran a whole feature article on the campaign of some Columbia Heights residents to bring a Whole Foods Market to the new Target/Best Buy development at 14th Street and Park NW — a plan that has been stalled over disagreements concerning dedicated......

In its first weekend, the Capital Fringe Festival turned downtown D.C. into a moveable feast of performance, as show after show made its Fringe debut. As we enter Day Five of the festival, it’s now time to go get a second helping—a show you want to see again or a show your friends have told you is a must-see. Even still, a handful of shows will get their start today. At DCist, we’d love to......

Written by DCist contributor Ian Buckwalter D.C. music fans still lamenting the loss last fall of Q and not U had two reasons to celebrate last night. Not only was Georgie James, Q drummer John Davis' new project with Laura Burhenn, playing yet another DC-area show, but they were playing with Scottish twee darlings Camera Obscura, who are so good at doing the "Belle and Sebastian thing" that it's quite possible they may do it......

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bids Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this guy......

Because we love rankings, we now find that even though the District is doing well on sustainability indicators, it may not do too well if an oil crisis hits. According to the folks at SustainLane.com (yep, the sustainability ranking people), the District isn't among the 10 cities that would +Ten+U.S.+Cities+Best+Prepared+for+Oil.html">effectively handle a dramatic jump to $100 barrels of oil. Based primarily on measures of how well people could get around in such circumstances, the site......

Ok, so we're no Portland or San Francisco, but we're also not Columbus or Oklahoma City. According to rankings released yesterday by SustainLane.com, the District is the twelfth most sustainable of the nation's 50 largest cities, coming in just behind Baltimore (11) and fellow -ist cities Boston (8), New York (7), Chicago (5), Philadelphia (4), Seattle (3), and San Francisco (2). According to the write-up on the city, the District fared well on public transit......

No matter how good you are, you're always at the mercy of the sound system. Two very good bands, The Joggers and Georgie James worked a capacity crowd at the Black Cat backstage last night. Unfortunately both performances suffered from technical difficulties and, in the case of the Joggers, a bonus hangover. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the Joggers make a broken bottleneck meets deliverance kind of rock. In 2003, the band released their debut LP,......

When we last checked in on them, the Washington Wizards were 8-11 and facing a tough five game road trip that would go a long way in deciding the outcome of their season. After losing their first three in L.A. (to the Lakers), Portland and Seattle, the team pulled out the last two games in Denver and Phoenix, giving them some much needed momentum when they returned home to face the Lakers last night.......

After a rough stretch that saw them lose five games in a row and six of seven overall, the Washington Wizards rebounded (no pun intended) last night with a 96-89 win over the road weary Portland Trailblazers. The Blazers, playing the last game of a grueling seven game road swing, obviously had that not so fresh feeling after a loss Tuesday night in Philadelphia and had trouble containing the Wizards All Star duo of Gilbert......

WEDNESDAY: >> Recently named Kennedy Center Artistic Advisor for Ballet, Suzanne Farrell knows George Balanchine's repertory better than anyone else -- she ought to, since Farrell herself is his most famous protégée. So you can expect nothing but exuberant and masterful performances, through Nov. 27, of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet's all-Balanchine extravaganza. Tickets are $29 to $84, at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. THURSDAY: >> It's Thanksgiving, and most of you will be gathering......

(Review by special DCist contributor Justin Kielsgard) Despite the debilitating D.C. humidity, summer is a time when people live in the open air. It’s a time when restrictions are looser, when possibilities seem fuller and closer. And no band represents the idea of possibility or freedom better right now than the eclectic 12-piece ensemble Pink Martini. For about two hours on Monday night the 9:30 Club was transformed from Hipster Haven to Continental Cabaret. In......

It's DCist's favorite time of the year, and we're not talking about our office's summer hours which begin next week. No, it's the NBA off-season, baby! Stat and fantasy geeks everywhere get to OD on rumor and innuendo tomorrow night when the NBA holds their annual draft. This may be the deepest draft in recent memory, so expect to hear the phrase "tremendous upside" more than you heard that crappy Rob Thomas song last week......

A few months ago, we were told a story about a couple that had just bought a condo on the Georgetown waterfront with a prime view of the ... Whitehurst Freeway. (Ooops, you didn't see the highway during the open house? The curtains must have been closed.) "Oh, we have a strong citizens' association!" the wife said. "We're going to have the freeway taken down." We thought, boy, it's amazing how far one's condo fees......

At the sold-out and uncomfortably crowded Colin Meloy concert last Friday night at Iota, you could hear whispers of discontent make their way through the audience. "I can't even move!" or "This is ridiculous; they obviously oversold the show," or "That jerk just spilled beer on my shoe," and perhaps the most common lament: "Where's Colin?!" But when Meloy, the front man for Portland indie folk group The Decemberists, took the stage grinning mischievously and......