With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it’s a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-a-verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we’ve all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked…

The Cold War Kids are the perfect complement to Muse. The boys from Fullerton, California stepped out into the Patriot Center last night with the same laid back attitude as if they were jamming in a friend’s garage. No props, no light shows, no flashy signs or confetti. They picked up their guitars and drumsticks in their partially tucked in shirts and just played, saving the over-the-top showmanship for their British conspiracy theorist headliners….

Mindgutter brings us a stunning night-time HDR shot of a building on the UMD campus. Like DCist Heather, I’m a complete astrogeek, so the inclusion of the conjuction of the Moon and Venus is a total bonus. I also like that, if you look closely, you can see a security camera in the cupola. Big Brother — and the Moon — is always watching. In the comments on the photo’s Flickr page, Mindgutter asks…

They see us when we’re speeding, they know when we run lights, they know when we park illegally, but we won’t pay up without a fight! Last week, we wrote about the transit implications of Adrian Fenty’s “200 Goals in 100 Days.” The mayor promised a lot of things, but the point everyone jumped on in the comments was his pledge to install traffic cameras on street sweepers. The cameras would photo-enforce the parking regulations…

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into…

Good morning, Washington. Excuse us if we’re a little grumpy. It might just be this hard-hitting report from NBC 4 that increasing numbers of professionals are hiring personal assistants to get their “frazzled lives” under control. Why can’t we get us a personal assistant to give us some Morning Roundup love, hmm? Then we could lounge around in our robe and sip our coffee at our leisure. Someday, someday. When bloggers rule the earth. But…

When a phrase becomes as ubiquitous as “Big Brother” (and we’re not even counting the reality show here), you wonder if it still holds any meaning, even when it’s coming from the original source. Meat and Potato Theatre company’s sparse but solid production of 1984 shows us that the man who wrote the book on totalitarian society still can have an impact, even on a small D.C. blackbox stage. Part of this, of course, comes…

Morning, Washington. Hypochondriacs of the city, grab some Valium, because the area seems to be teeming with illness lately. The good news, we think, is that the Maryland Department of Health has determined that three of the reported E. coli cases were not related to contaminated spinach, though it’s not clear where they picked up the bacteria. The Department is still investigating four cases, including the death of one woman, but with any luck, we’ll…

Chalk it up to some interesting cropping by the Washington Times photo staff, but a picture published today by the paper of Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich makes him look frighteningly like Big Brother from George Orwell’s classic, 1984. Kinda freaky, isn’t it?…

Happy Wednesday, Washington. Sadly, there’s even more crime to report this morning, and yes, you guessed it, more rain — though after the record high temperatures we’ve experienced earlier this week, we dare say we wouldn’t mind some more of those scattered thunderstorms predicted for the metro area — the high will 88° today, with a 40% chance of strong showers hitting this afternoon. Cooler temperatures will be a welcome relief after yesterday’s first Code…