Despite what they say about first impressions, in music it’s the second impression that can be the most important. Call it what you want, the sophomore jinx or the sophomore slump, the second album determines whether an artist can match his or her first effort or even grow beyond it. D.C.-based artist Laura Tsaggaris (suh Gair iss) must’ve spent the four years between her 2005 debut Proof and her newest record, Keep Talking, thinking…

Last August, we wrote about Marissa, a 19-month-old baby girl living in Annandale, Virginia, who was diagnosed at two months with a rare pediatric condition called Infantile Spasms (IS). IS is a type of epilepsy experienced in infancy that causes clusters of seizures and can lead to development problems. Marissa’s father, Mike, who spearheaded a global online effort for IS awareness, recently e-mailed us with the sad news that Marissa has “taken a turn…

There must be a lot of angry D.C.-area commuters working as video game developers these days. In last year’s Fallout 3, Bethesda Softworks turned the greater D.C. area into a wasteland, reducing a transit system closely resembling Metro to a series of ghoul-infested tunnels. Now Sega is releasing The Conduit (hat tip to unsuckdcmetro), in which Metro is reduced to a series of alien-infested tunnels. Nothing says system-wide delay like a raygun shoot-out at Metro…

In a past Three Stars interview, DCist Music Editor Amanda Mattos called D.C./Brooklyn quartet Deleted Scenes “not a great local band, but a great band in general.” Listening to their debut LP, Birdseed Shirt, it’s difficult to challenge that assessment. Named after an invention dreamed up by Jonathan Safran Foer’s protagonist in the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Birdseed Shirt is brimming with ideas — much like Foer’s book — and clearly the work…

It’s difficult to describe Edie Sedgwick without using the word “strange.” No, we’re not talking about the actress who starred in Andy Warhol’s short films in the 1960s and died of ethanol intoxication. We’re talking about Antelope vocalist Justin Moyer’s gender-bending side project, which recently released its third full-length, Things Are Getting Sinister And Sinisterer, on Dischord Records. At first, we were a little wary of the album. Back in March of 2007, we gave…

MONDAY: Nizam Ali — whose parents, Ben and Virginia Ali, opened Ben’s Chili Bowl 50 years ago — and Tracey Gold Bennett will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of their new book, Ben’s Chili Bowl: 50 Years of a Washington DC Landmark. 6:30 p.m. TUESDAY: Dexter Filkins, an award-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest…

MONDAY: CBS News’ Bob Schieffer talks about Bob Schieffer’s America at Politics and Prose. Sounds like an episode of Sliders where Jerry O’Connell jumps into a dimension in which Schieffer has become president and he commands an army of cybernetic men in order to suppress all original thought. Or was that Dr. Who? 7 p.m. Linn Ullmann — author of Stella Descending and the daughter of legendary director, screenwriter, and author Ingmar Bergman — will…

MONDAY: Steve Gillon will be at the New America Foundation to discuss The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. 12:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.-based author and journalist Ron Suskind will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: George Pelecanos and contributors Rhozier “Roach” Brown and James Grady will…

TUESDAY: Bobby Austin will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Circus Clowns & Carnival Animals: Growing Up in the Ebb and Flow of Rural Black Life. 6 p.m. Daniel Mendelsohn, the best-selling author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest collection of essays, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken….

Some of us on staff here at DCist are unrepentant video game nerds, so we couldn’t help but notice this posting yesterday on the gaming site Penny Arcade about Marissa, a 9-month-old Annandale, Virginia, resident who was diagnosed with a rare pediatric condition called Infantile Spasms (IS). Marissa’s dad, being a gaming fan like us, sent the guys at Penny Arcade an e-mail asking if they could take one of Marissa’s three stuffed bunnies named…