The plot thickens for the Montgomery County-Live Nation concert hall deal. In September the county signed a non-binding letter of intent with concert promoter Live Nation for a Fillmore concert hall in Silver Spring, which would give the company $8 million in state and county funds, rent well below the market rate, and other perks. But now, county council members, groups of residents, and even the Howard County executive are questioning the county’s deal and…

It looks like I.M.P., the Montgomery County-based company that runs the 9:30 Club and Merriweather Post Pavilion, hasn’t given up on opening a Silver Spring music hall. In September, we wrote that concert producer and venue owner Live Nation had signed a non-binding letter of intent to put a Fillmore music hall in the old J.C. Penney store at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road in Silver Spring, across from the AFI Silver Theater. Both the…

Washington chefs fell to 1-2 in Iron Chef America competitions, as Bobby Flay defeated the uni-monikered Morou in Battle Frozen Peas last night on the Food Network show — two months after Galileo’s Roberto Donna avenged his own loss to Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. Morou — the former Signatures chef who had earned the right to take on an Iron Chef when he topped former 1789 chef Ris Lacoste and Tosca’s Cesare Lanfranconi in the…

A snippet of news from Maryland today is the stuff that dream Morning Roundup’s are made up. Funny and off-kilter, but real. It seems that some Maryland residents are a little peeved at what has come to be known as the state’s “flush tax,” writes WTOP. In order to raise money to upgrade the state’s sewage treatment plants to protect the vulnerable Chesapeake Bay from pollutants, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich this year endorsed a new…

Thanks to DCist reader “chrisafer” of Blah Blah Black Sheep who sends word that a notable Kazakhstani journalist was spotted in D.C. recently. Borat Sagdiyev, host of the popular Borat’s Guide to America, was seen at this weekend’s Capital Pride Festival, interviewing attendees. According to Chris, Borat’s staff were not happy with the attention they received from his partner Glenn: Borat’s handlers weren’t happy. They actually were kind of rude to Glenn. I guess they…

The Metropolitan Police Department is trumpeting new statistics showing that rates of aggressive speeding continue to drop. And the department credits its mobile and stationary radar units deployed across the city. In September 2001, about 113,000 cars were monitored. 21 percent were found to be aggressively speeding. This past September, nearly 1.3 million cars were monitored, but only 4.2 percent were found to be aggressively speeding. Since the program’s start, 1.1 million letters of infraction…

A controversy has been shaking the visual arts community following the firing of Philip Barlow, the curator of the Washington Projects for the Arts/Corcoran’s “OPTIONS 2005” biennial. The root of the artistic flap can be traced back to two public art exhibitions, the Party Animals and Pandamania, the much-loved sidewalk art/charity projects organized by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In September, the Post reported that Barlow would not be considering artists who…