In a play that oscillates easily between explicit sexual fantasies and pointed critiques of African American culture, Nina Angela Mercer’s Gutta Beautiful, part of the Fringe Festival, gives a complex picture of contemporary African American life. Written as a “conversation with [her] block,” Mercer’s story is also rooted particularly in D.C. and her life here. The loose narrative of the story focuses on Lola, a young woman hungry for both sex and love, but…

The Washington Post reports that TV shows based in D.C. consistently have the oldest viewers. Now, considering that we here at DCist are still lamenting the end of The West Wing, we might not be your average younger viewer. Nonetheless, we think D.C. has unexploited TV potential. What’s sexier than taking low-paying jobs that look good on your resume? Or spotting George Stephanopoulos at Starbucks? Not much. So TV execs in the readership, listen up!…

Heaven is a bleak place for Anselm Kiefer. In one of the largest retrospectives of the revered German artist, featured this summer at the Hirshhorn, Heaven and Earth reevaluates Kiefer’s thirty-year career in terms of the futile struggle to transcend the mundane and reach towards the heavenly. Yet in Kiefer’s imagining, we never quite get there, hovering, instead, in the murky ether of his canvas. Best known for his dark commentary on German culture…

Really, we should all be mad about Pink Mountaintops. Because they’re Canadian. And they’re doing down-and-dirty, makin’-it-behind-the-bleachers rock ‘n roll, a genre that we should theoretically own, hands down. And worse than that, they’re doing it well. I mean, as if Canada had not already asserted its indie rock dominance, now they come trouncing on home territory. Yet, it’s just really hard to be mad at a man with questionably short shorts and Jesus-hair crooning…

Are you a colon-person? Or perhaps more of a fireman’s carry-type? Author Evany Thomas has distinguished thirty-nine different sleeping positions, which, according to Thomas, can unlock the secrets to your personality and relationships. Joined by Dustin Long, reading from his new Nordic mystery novel, Icelander, Thomas will be at Olsson’s in Dupont Circle on Monday reading from The Secret Language of Sleep: a Couple’s Guide to Thirty-Nine Positions. Both books are published by Dave Eggers’…

Dignitaries and punk rockers rubbed elbows Wednesday night, packing the AFI Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring for the D.C. premiere of a documentary on landmines by local filmmakers Mary Wareham and Brian Liu. With a soundtrack by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty and an art rock aesthetic, Wareham and Liu gave a complex and often alarming look at the global movement to end the use of landmines that was both informative and visually stunning….