FRIDAY: >> The 18th Street Lounge's regular Wednesday night reggae stars SEE-I are at the Rock and Roll Hotel to celebrate the holidays with some friends who are sure to get you dancing too -- DJ Mat the Alien and remix artists Fort Knox Five. Tickets for the Happy FKX-XMas are $10. >> Rufus Wainwright begins a two-night stint at the 9:30 Club tonight with his sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche. Tickets are still available for......

Is everyone already leaving town for the holidays? Our calendar here at Reader, Meet Author is looking a little lonely right now. If you have any tips or complaints that we're not posting all the awesome poetry readings, feel free to email us. MONDAY: Caroline Kennedy will be at Politics and Prose to share the Christmas prose most dear to her. It's all in her latest book, A Family Christmas, which includes tributes to Irving......

Written by DCist Contributer Josh Kramer The Eagle – American University: >>AU students lamented losing their Hollywood Video this week, which is holding a giant closing sale and selling all of its movies. It's unclear what will become of the space, conveniently located next to the AU shuttle bus stop and the Tenleytown-AU Metro station. >>Sgt. Zachary Tellier, a 1998 AU graduate, was killed by enemy fire while fighting in Afghanistan on the 29th of......

>> We would have liked to have read about "The Best Bars in DC For Ensuring That You Will Not Run Into a Single Person Even Vaguely Connected With Politics or Media (crossposted to Gridskipper)." Good luck to you, Pareene. [Wonkette] >> A fire will be set Saturday morning on Metrorail's bridge over the Potomac River as part of an emergency-response drill involving 100 firefighters from seven area jurisdictions. The Yellow line will be shut......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. The Washington Highlands neighborhood of the District of Columbia is terra incognita for many Washingtonians. Tucked up against the District’s southeastern border with Maryland’s Prince George’s County, the area is walled off from the rest of the city by Oxon Run Park, the Anacostia Freeway, Bolling Air Force Base, and the Anacostia River, not to mention the yawning gap between its economic......

FRIDAY: >> Octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson (at right), said to be the last black traditional string band player, plays a free show at The Kennedy Center's The Millennium Stage with fellow folk musicians Wayne Martin on fiddle and Bob Carlin, a clawhammer style banjoist. 6 p.m. >> Space rockers The Gulf sold out their D.C. show in April, and are coming back to play at the Red and the Black with the Joonies, Twin Earth,......

Most bloggers rely on nicknames or online handles to keep their ramblings at least somewhat anonymous -- and that's not terribly different than some of the District's notorious criminals. In this morning's Post, we learn that District police have started keeping tabs on the street names criminals use, entering them into a database and linking them to names, addresses and other identifying characteristics. So far, police have thousands of street names on file, everything from......

Good Monday morning to you, Washington. We can officially declare that the dog days of August have arrived today, now that the House has finally, finally adjourned for their summer break. News junkies will want to note that before heading home they passed a modified version of the defense budget, which will increase spending for defense health care and military housing, among a list of other expenditures. Of course what Washingtonians really care about is......

MONDAY: Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about her latest book, Peony in Love. 7 p.m. We had to yell "STOP THE PRESSES!" for this one. Laura Sessions Stepp, our favorite Washington Post personality, will be at Arlington Central Library to promote her latest book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. For those of you unfamiliar with......

They’re back in the limelight, and dressed to impress. After wooing fans up and down the coast on stage and TV, Hello Tokyo is now tackling the fashion industry. The D.C. based pop rockers have recently completed a photo shoot to be featured in Fashion Fight’s Poverty’s (FFP) 2007 Lookbook. What is Fashion Fights Poverty? “Featuring national and international designers who employ ethical means and practices in their design and manufacturing processes to produce products......

FRIDAY: >> Let it be known - any country with a holiday that translates as "party of music" (or "music party") is OK in our book. In celebration of the French holiday Fete de la Musique, as well as the summer solstice, French and American musicians will be performing at La Maison Francaise tonight. Local guitar and cello duo Janel and Anthony*** will play from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on the auditorium stage, but......

In response to the record temperatures outside, the District has opened eight of its public swimming pools today. If for some reason you're free for the rest of the afternoon, head on down to cool off.: The following pools were opened until 6 p.m.: * Fort Lincoln (3201 Fort Lincoln Drive NE) * Fort Stanton (1800 Erie St. SE) * Benning Park (5300 Fitch St. SE) * Kenilworth-Parkside (4300 Anacostia Ave. NE) * Fort......

>> In case you missed this story in the Washington Post this morning, it seems another one of D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton's favorite long-term projects, expanding the District's Home Rule Charter to give the District budget and legislative autonomy, is actually getting some play up on the Hill. We can't even count how many times she's introduced bills like the two currently before the House, but it's been at least 15 years since Congress......

Ninety-six degress, Washington. That's what weather.com is predicting for today's high. That should put the heat index safely into the hundred range, and the city as a whole into the "justified complaining" range. And it's what made this photo from phillefan_99 catch our attention. It's hard to look at it and not think wistfully of summer days at Cameron Run, rubbing our backs raw on the waterslides and bobbing in the suspiciously salty wave......

Ever since he took office after eight years of Mayor Anthony Williams' tenure, the question has burned in our minds: Will D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty continue Williams' tradition by opening the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation's public swimming pools with a cannonball dive? He's been asked the question a number of times already, but always with a different answer. First Fenty said maybe his twin sons, Matthew and Andrew, would do the honors. Then......

Yes, that's a fire hydrant that's become home to a swarm of bees on 16th and P Sts., NW. The note attached says a beekeeper has been called to take care of the problem. Anyone have some Raid? >> The DCist Department of Cryptozoology would like to propose formal protection for Bigfoot as an endangered species. One Canadian lawmaker is moving to do just that. Who else is picturing Marion Barry arguing for an......

Welcome to Tuesday, D.C. You've got a couple hours to enjoy the warm, sunny weather that we've become accustomed to in the last few days. This afternoon a series of rain storms will roll into town and stick around for the rest of the work week. Joy. Today is our last day in the 80s for a while too. Mid 60s and low 70s are on tap for the foreseeable future. So grab an......

>> Sen. John McCain probably wishes he didn't sing "bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boy's "Barbara Ann" at a meeting with supporters. Or at least he wishes it wasn't captured on YouTube. [via Reason's Hit & Run] >> Local groups continue to schedule memorials to the victims of Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech. You can find a good list of Washington-area events here. [NBC4] >> Tickets for both Wilco and the......

Run for your lives, Washington. Rats have taken over our fair city, and there is no hope of escaping their evil, rat-like ways. We shall flee to the suburbs and their clean, plastic, rat-free lifestyle. But wait! Inside Edition, long-time bastion of quality broadcast news, is here to save us. Thank God for Inside Edition's Rat Patrol. Let me start out by saying that Inside Edition is possibly the greatest news show on television. Not......

As this weekend's madness subsides, the dizzying swell of lunacy set to commence this Thursday has begun to mount. If you're like us, you spend countless hours feverishly scribbling away at your notes. You dart to the printer to pick up your bracket like Han Solo on the Kessel Run. Your fingers are trained to the Alt and Tab buttons with ninja-like precision. Oh yes, the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is soon to be underway......

Guy walks into a studio executive's office in Hollywood and says, "I've got a fantastic idea for a movie. Guaranteed blockbuster." The executive leans forward in his chair. "Go on," he says. "OK, so you take Jackass, cross it with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, set it in an urban environment, put lots of young people in funny clothes while pulling shopping carts around the city like sled dogs and drinking at......

Two new shows opened yesterday on the second floor of the Hirshhorn Museum, and an unexpected ice day offered the perfect chance to go see them. Refract, Reflect, Project brings together a few rooms worth of light works from the museum's collection, some more recent and some classics. The most striking work was an installation by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, whose The weather project transformed the Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern in 2003.......

Written by DCist contributor Spencer Ackerman Never mind the endless D.C. barbeque debate. Neither minds nor palates will ever change in this feud of provincialism. Texans, you might as well stop reading here. For anyone who wants some real, no-nonsense Carolina pork barbeque, however, get out past gentrification's reach and into B & J North Carolina BBQ in LeDroit Park. This, my friends, is as authentic as it gets: you get a nose full of......

DCist first told you about Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary film Jesus Camp back in June, when it walked away with the Grand Jury Award from the SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Film Festival. Now paired up with Magnolia Pictures, Jesus Camp is currently at Landmark's E Street Theater and has been making a big splash at box offices all over the country. The film follows a group of evangelical Christian kids from Missouri as they......

The weather's turning cooler, and runners everywhere know what that means: it's time to finish breaking in shoes, finalize hydration strategies and push through the last awful burst of training before the season hits its peak. For some D.C. runners, there's one more item on that to-do list: start shopping for a new dress. For some reason this town's array of transvestite track & field options keeps expanding. Sad to say, but the first of......

As the toasty summer finally begins its comforting descent into autumn, we're confronted with a leisure-time question: what to do about the 28 remaining Nats home games? The weather’s getting nicer, but the baseball’s getting nasty. Last night, more than 21,000 enjoyed a 77-degree evening at RFK, but spent it watching the tattered remains of a Nats pitching staff get knocked around the yard in a 9-6 loss. With AAA-level baseball being played at RFK,......

FRIDAY: If loving Busta Rhymes' new album, The Big Bang, is wrong — well we sure as hell don't want to be right. Yes, Busta has always been one of those charismatic rap superstars without much substance to back him up, and yes, there was a time when his shortcomings had become awfully grating. But now that he's hooked up with Dr. Dre's Aftermath label, that time appears to have ended. This is what summertime......

MONDAY The enormous efforts undertaken by naturalists to save the California condor are documented by John Nielsen in his book, Condor: To the Brink and Back—The Life and Times of One Giant Bird. Nielsen will be at the Audubon Naturalist Society to sign and discuss his book, bringing with him the hope that the condor will one day again fly with ubiquity across the western skies, and that my special recipe for crème brulee—which calls......

FRIDAY: >> There are few names in modern dance as big as Merce Cunningham. The veteran dancer and choreograhper brings his company to the Kennedy Center tonight and Sat. to perform a few of their paradigmatic pieces, including Fabrications, featuring music by Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, and Sounddance, with music by David Tudor. These shows are a sure thing. $21 to $50, both shows at 8 p.m. >> Serious ambient and electronic music fans......

If you're dreading your commute home already, we feel your pain. According to WTOP, the Metropolitan Council of Governments today published a report that found that traffic in the region had worsened since 2002. And the worst time to try and get home, according to the report? From 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., an hour that has experienced a 64 percent increase in congestion in the last four years. The report similarly listed the region's 10......