MONDAY >> Three Stars alums The Chance and J. Forté + the Secret Pop Band, D.C.’s favorite lofi power-poppers, are playing a great double-bill (bothThree Stars veterans) at the Black Cat Backstage. 9 p.m. $6. TUESDAY >> Yet another revival of West Side Story comes to Wolf Trap and stays there until Sunday. Apparently it’s the 50th anniversary. 8 p.m. with matinée shows at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. $18-68. WEDNESDAY >> The Rock…

Via Editor & Publisher, the Washington City Paper, along with the Chicago Reader, which the City Paper owns, has been sold to Atlanta-based company Creative Loafing, publisher of four other alternative weeklies in Atlanta, Tampa, Sarasota, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C. The City Paper name will remain in place, despite the other four papers all carrying the “Creative Loafing” name. In a post to the City Paper’s staff blog, City Desk, Senior Editor Mike DeBonis said…

Since 1983, Loose Lips, the City Paper’s weekly local politics column, has been the place to get quirky news and commentary on the District’s political figures. But today, James Jones, Loose Lips columnist for the last two years, bids farewell to the paper. Jones came to the City Paper after a stint at WAMU, and his first column was published on March 11, 2005. According to the folks at the City Paper, Jones has taken…

>> Poor little Village Voice music critic just can’t seem to master L’Enfant’s design for D.C., gets lost on the way to 9:30 Club and misses half of last night’s Air show. Bwahahaha. The diagonals don’t form a pentagram for no reason. >> Congratulations to local rising stars Le Loup for getting signed to Hardly Art, a new label under Sub Pop “focused on offering quality records for people to enjoy”. You’ll learn more…

Veteran gossip columnist Michael Musto is in town today promoting his new book, La Dolce Musto, a collection from his columns of the same name (he’ll be at Nage Restaurant from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.). The bespectacled provocateur has spent 20 years at the Village Voice chronicling New York City’s gay life, nightlife and sex life, sometimes in terms that would make Candace Bushnell blush. Along with the tales of club kids, politics and sex…

Matthew Barney rarely leaves one ambivalent; in fact, it’s hard to think of a living artist quite so polarizing. On the one hand, you have people like New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman declaring Barney “the most important American artist of his generation,” and on the other hand there’s the Village Voice’s Ed Halter using words like “masturbatory,” “ritual self-involvement” and “superficial foofery.” How it is that he is the subject of such a…

It was just two weeks ago that City Paper Editor in Chief Erik Wemple announced he’d be moving on up in the world, heading up to New York to take the helm of the famed Village Voice. We guessed it wouldn’t be long until he was back in D.C. — and we were right. Well, to be fair, he never really even got started. He was set to take over the paper on July 24,…

City Paper Editor Jumps Ship: This won’t do anything for the District’s morale. Gawker and WJLA are reporting the Erik Wemple, the City Paper’s Editor in Chief, has been hired away by New York’s Village Voice. Wemple has manned the helm of the City Paper since January 2002, and has long been known in D.C. for his biting cutdowns of the Post. We’ll miss Wemple, but we’re sure it’ll only be a few months…

FRIDAY: >> After a superb D.C. debut last year in the back room, Pleaseeasaur is returning to theBlack Cat tonight, this time on the mainstage, opening for San Diego’s Pinback. J.P. Hasson and his invisible sidekick Thomas Hurley III are apparently taking a break this month from recording a new Comedy Central-sponsored album to perform a number of valuable pubilc service announcements. Did you know, for example, that “Cobras are Totally Cool?” Or, for that…