Jon Langford is responsible for way too much great art for you not to know who he is. To begin at the beginning, he’s one of two remaining original members of the Mekons, singing and playing guitar in the increasingly difficult-to-categorize onetime punk band he founded while studying art at the University of Leeds, England, in 1977. Their albums Fear and Whiskey and Edge of the World, from 1985 and 1986, respectively, were among…

The Ponys play the Black Cat Backstage tonight with Jay Reatard. $10, Doors at 9 p.m. The Ponys are one of those buzz bands that seem perennially plagued with the “next big thing” tag. Hailing from Chicago, a city full of legends of all sorts and more than a few hype-worthy up-and-comers, theirs is a difficult task. But 2006’s Turn the Lights Out picked up where Celebration Castle left off and took it one step…

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…

If anyone asked us about D.C.’s signature dish, of course we’d say wings with mumbo sauce. If they asked where to get it, we’d send them to Howard China. This teeny carryout is a favorite of Howard students, and it was a friend from Howard who introduced us to it when we visited him as undergrads. He walked us across Georgia Avenue at two in the morning and ordered us the same thing we…

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend was really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you…

A week and a half after coming from behind to beat the Chicago Fire at home, the DC United fell short of duplicating that feat in Chicago. Despite a long period off, a recent return to winning form and the breaking of their road-scoring curse, DC fell 4-3 in the Windy City last night. “We gave away the first half,” said United coach Peter Nowak. Chicago’s Nate Jaqua traded early goals with Christian Gomez,…

Human hormones and chicken estrogen dumped in the Potomac River watershed might be the reason why male bass in West Virginia are producing eggs. The Post explores this odd environmental development. While there isn’t any reason to believe that this could affect humans in the near-term, scientists think that “fish might be the first to absorb any dangerous chemicals that might later affect humans.” This news comes after news that the dangerous northern snakehead is…