Vincent Orange, fighting Kwame Brown for Gray’s seat, went with a smaller Cadillac SUV than his competitor. What, he couldn’t afford an orange paint job?

Welcome back, Washington. You’re probably still busy with Holiday merriment, but we’re here working hard for you. Err… rather, we’ll be posting today between yelling at football games and re-heating the Christmas roast beast. Also worth noting is the beginning of Kwanzaa and observance of Boxing Day. While Kwanzaa is mainly an American week of celebration, we have special envy of Boxing Day, a holiday virtually everywhere else in the English-speaking world. It’s a whole extra day of shopping, food and sports with almost no religious obligation! We think an international city like D.C. could be at the forefront of bringing this extra government-mandated day off to the national calender. DCist Readers, Unite!

Take This Gift And Shove It: Looks like it’ll be that much harder to return the duplicate copy of K Fed’s album Santa left in your stocking this year. Due to a rise in fraud retailers are tightening their return policies. Apparently, 9% of all holiday purchases are returned and today promises to be a mob scene at most stores. If it means avoiding an hour-long line at the Best Buy, we’d rethink the merits of PopoZao.

Roam If You Want To: Enjoy it while you can; Virginia has suspended lane closures until 6 a.m. tomorrow to help easy holiday traffic. Short-term maintenance and construction will also be stopped from 6 a.m.on Dec. 30 until 6 a.m. on Jan. 3.

Goodbye To Musical Pioneer: We couldn’t give you a roundup without paying respect to James Brown: Godfather of Soul and (insert your favorite beatifying title here). This time last year he visited our fair city and the septuagenarian rocked the 9:30 club with ease. Even local politicians were beside themselves to get on stage with the legend. We wish him a continued funky journey.

Briefly Noted: National Airport gets spruced up… Deadly shooting at Bladensburg club…

This Day in DCist: We pondered the synthesis of urban graffiti and big business. There was also a bit of fretting about our remaining Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Chrismukkah and Festivus responsibilities.

Photo by Flickr user alex.DC.

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