Good holiday news for District oenophiles: via the Examiner, the D.C. Council is considering legislation that would boost the amount of wine you can could have shipped to you from outside the city to two cases per month, per home or business. Currently an individual is limited to only one quart of wine per month if you don’t have a manufacturer’s, wholesaler’s or retailer’s license. Of course, retailers and wholesalers are expected to oppose the…

This is a great time of the year for beer lovers. Winter, more than any other season, is when craft brewers get a chance to flex their creativity and brew some unusual beers that satisfy the palate and warm the heart. Although many have traditionally been called Christmas beers, most brewers these days are going with some variation on the “winter” theme, in a large part because of the stigma of seeing a “Christmas” beer…

Happy Halloween, Washington! From the looks of things, Mayor Adrian Fenty is in a festive mood for the holiday, and had a great time right alongside everyone else at last night’s 17th Street High Heel Race. The Examiner isn’t so sure Fenty’s high spirits will last though, as members of the D.C. Council are ticked off at the Mayor for snubbing their hearings by not sending a representative from his office to attend them. Hopefully…

Disoriented and Seeing Stars WaPo reviewer Tom Sietsema has released his 2007 Washington Post Dining Guide online. You can catch it on newsstands this weekend. At the top, Cathal Armstrong’s Restaurant Eve has broken through to the four-star category, and his revamped Majestic also made the list. Newcomers Central Michel Richard (3 stars), Proof (2.5), Farrah Olivia (2.5), and Hook (2.5) also made it onto the list. A surprising omission was Brasserie Beck, which Sietsema…

Good morning, Washington. As you make your way into work on this fine morning, a note to fans of Canadian super group Stars: “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”? Good song. “Set Yourself on Fire”? Good song. Setting your ex-lover on fire? Apparently not cool. Attack of the Dubyas: Washington Post Radio (WTWP) is shifting to a “personality driven talk format.” And whose personalities (I hear you cry) will be driven into us courtesy of the once-anodyne…

Written by DCist contributor Eric Denman As summer lingers on, the average D.C. resident may be tempted to stay indoors, limit excursions, and camp out in front of the A/C unit with a tongue-numbingly cold, mass-produced lager. There is a better option! A nice Belgian beer can quench your thirst while also satisfying your palate. Although some Belgian styles may be a bit heavy for summer, many of them fit the bill perfectly (Witbier and…

>> Fort Reno soldiers on tonight, with Mess Up the Mess, Julie Ocean, and the final ever performance from Three Stars alums The Sentiment, who are calling it quits as a group after tonight. 7:15 p.m. >> Debuting tonight is “Bomb Shelter,” a weekly stand-up showcase featuring five local improv personalities. Why the militaristic name? Because there is no “bombing” here. The comedians promise to stun weapons of mass hilarity, which means no random drunk…

Rogue and peasant slave? Try petulant teenager. Jeffrey Carlson’s take on the title character of Shakespeare Theater’s production of Hamlet, is much more a pouting, stubborn young man rather than a noble, conflicted individual. At first, Carlson’s Hamlet seems a bit affected. He’s constantly sniffing, as if a coke addict, and it seems for awhile that his steady whining will be too much to handle for the entirety of a three-hour production. But his portrayal…

Opera is a serious musical genre, the summa of high dramatic art. For some serious thoughts about the season just concluded by Washington National Opera, you could read the Opera Season in Review from last week. In a less exalted but equally important way, opera is about ostentation, and in that vein, there is one more glittering event that always makes the end of the season final in Washington, and that is the annual Opera…

>> Four suspicious packages discovered near L’Enfant Plaza, which led to the closure of Independence Avenue between 7th and 12th streets and the evacuation of some buildings in southwest D.C. this morning, were determined to be non-threatening. [NBC4] >> D.C. firefighters were called to the scene of an apparent spill of a toxic industrial floor stripper inside a building in the 2400 block of 17th St. NW. The building was evacuated and about 50…