Category Archives: Entertainment

Entertainment, Music, Special Events, The Daily Feed
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We luv you, Britney

Photo courtesy of ~BostonBill~
Hang in there Britney, courtesy of ~BostonBill~

Britney Spears, everyone’s favorite train wreck, released her new album today, but the real news is that she’s coming to DC!

Welcome, crazy dad, dangerous paparazzi, and baby daddy drama. The madness won’t descend on DC until March 24, but the internet presale started today and goes through December 5th at 10pm. If you’re willing to spend upwards of $300 three months before the actual show, all you have to do is enter promo code IHEARTBRIT at checkout. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Entertainment, The Daily Feed
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Heads Up: Nerdcore Alert

MC Lars and MC Frontalot with YT Cracker at Mexicali Blues, Teaneck, photo by James Mitchell

If you don’t have a genre that fits your style of music, just make one up. That’s what MC Lars did. He calls his style “Post-punk Laptop Rap,” others call it nerdcore, but I just call it fun. His sound is similar to the recently popular Flobots, just slightly funnier and with a tad less ego thrown in.

Check him out next Tuesday night at Jammin Java for crowd-pleasing songs like “Download This Song,” which makes fun of out-of-touch record companies, and “Internet Relationships (Are Not Real Relationships).”

Adventures, Downtown, Entertainment, Essential DC, Fun & Games, Life in the Capital, Special Events
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DC Loves the Holidays

Photo courtesy of FredoAlvarez
Union Station Wreaths, courtesy of FredoAlvarez

Ok, I confess.

My initial intent with doing a “Holiday Happenings” article was to hit the majority of the cool stuff happening in the area. But as I did more and more research, the more amazed (and flummoxed) I became with the sheer volume of cool holiday stuff to do around here.

This’ll be my third Christmas in the area and my first real foray into finding out what all is going on to sate my holiday appetite. Normally we just hit the area neighborhood to ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ over light displays but this year? We wanted to really take advantage of the season.

Hence wanting to take this project on. Boy, am I ashamed to say I was utterly ignorant on the goings-on around here during December.

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Business and Money, Entertainment
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Buy Local, Online: The Best of Both Worlds

Holly Chopsticks, photo courtesy A. Drauglis Furnituremaker
Holly Chopsticks, photo courtesy A. Drauglis Furnituremaker

I am on record preferring to do all my shopping online. I hate malls, even when they’re NOT packed with crazed bargain-seekers, stressed about the state of the economy.  But I’ve also spent all year trying to source my food locally and enjoying the intangible benefits of spending my dollars within my own community. Fortunately, Etsy.com, which is a marketplace for individuals to sell their crafts and handmade items, provides a handy Shop Local feature so you can specifically search for sellers in your area.

I have to admit that Etsy’s search isn’t nearly as well developed as I’d like- for example you can search item descriptions for the type of item you’re looking for, OR you can search for sellers in a local area, but you can’t search for a particular kind of item made by a local seller.  Which is kind of lame, and it means that you have to be pretty committed to buying gifts from local artists to make this work.  Or, you can work from our gift guide! Read on for my suggestions:
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Adventures, Entertainment, Essential DC, Food and Drink, Special Events
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Extended Weekend: What to Do?

Photo courtesy of F1RSTBORN
Jive Turkey, courtesy of F1RSTBORN

In town for the holidays and not a cook? Looking for some dining options other than wrestling with a big ol’ Butterball and your mom yammering in your ear? Hosting relatives and looking for things to get them out of the house? Or are you an international visitor and don’t celebrate with us Yanks?

We’ve got you covered.

Behold, a quick-and-dirty WeLoveDC look at dining and fun options for the upcoming four-day weekend.

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Adventures, Downtown, Entertainment, Essential DC, Life in the Capital, Weekend Flashback
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Weekend Flashback: 11/21 – 11/23

Photo courtesy of M.V. Jantzen
Back from the Past, courtesy of M.V. Jantzen

From new theater openings to the reopening of the NMAH, from yard work to group fun, you guys really made the most of this past weekend. Sooooo many good photos, I couldn’t stop!

Keep up the great work capturing life in our area. With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I know I’ll find some great stuff from everyone for next week.

And watch this space next Monday: we’re going to have a photo contest, and you’re all invited!

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Entertainment, Food and Drink, Night Life, We Love Drinks
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We Love Drinks: Tabard Inn

Tabard Inn Cocktail

"Tabard Inn Cocktail" with lemon zest and thyme leaves...

When the weather gets frigid, I begin my never-ending quest for a drinks spot with “hygge.” This is one of those totally untranslatable Danish words – encompassing a feeling of warmth, cosiness, and social cheer, hopefully accented by music and free of pretension – the feeling you get on a cold night, halfway through a mulled cider or a hot toddy, sinking into a soft divan before a fireplace, surrounded by jazz aficionados – wait a minute, here’s a much easier translation:

“Hygge” = Tabard Inn.

Tabard Inn is a classic small hotel, neither swank nor modern nor cold, with an antique-filled, lived-in look, like a grandmother with a twinkle in her eye. It’s hard to go wrong with drinks in the firelit front room, but you can also snuggle up in one of the many nooks upstairs or at the bar in the dining room.  It’s the sort of place my girlfriends and I go when we want “proper cocktails” in a quiet comfortable corner – reminding me of my favorite place for drinks in NYC, the Algonquin Hotel.

Last Sunday was one of those nights, with a brisk wind driving us to thoughts of mulled cider before the fireplace.

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Entertainment, Special Events, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Kooza (Cirque du Soleil)

Chavari 2 Courtesy of Cirque du Soliel

Chavari 2 Courtesy of Cirque du Soliel

Earlier this past summer WaPo’s DC Scout sent me an email giving me pre-sale access to tickets for Cirque du Soleil’s touring show, Kooza. I bought tickets, and then promptly forgot about the show until looking at my calendar for November. I was pretty excited to remember Kooza! I’d never been to see a Cirque show, though I always hear rave reviews every time I talk with someone about a Cirque show that they’ve seen.

Kooza is playing at National Harbor, up above the main harbor on what they call the plateau, basically a huge parking lot and a big paved surface for Kooza’s tent. Matt and I arrived at the big top tent, or the “The Grand Chapiteau” about an hour before the show started. We got there just as the 4 p.m. showing was letting out, which was good because we got a good parking spots. And then we headed up to the main tent, which opens an hour before the show. Smart, since Cirque has shops and refreshment stands open before the show and lets you take food in. The beer selection is not to shabby (they featured Magic Hat‘s aptly named Circus Boy hefeweisen) and we got to share a chocolate mousse pie.

We headed into our seats and that’s when the show began. Immediately clowns started coming out into the audience, picking on people. There were a few scattered through the audience acting as spectators, and then surprising people by jumping up and being a part of the show. I love that kind of audience interaction, and knew we were in for a good time.

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Entertainment, The Daily Feed
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Dreary Weekend Activities

Sunday Afternoon Rain by RSchley

Sunday Afternoon Rain by RSchley

Thursdays always make me think of Fridays, which make me think about my weekend plans. And this weekend is looking like it’s going to be a dreary one.

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to motivate to get out of bed on days like today, when it’s chilly and steadily raining. So here are a list of activities for different levels of motivation this weekend, from “not leaving the house” to “rain? what rain?” Continue reading →

Entertainment, News, WTF?!
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XM Sirius: Destroying the Point of Satellite Radio


XM Sirius, photo by maxedaperture

I certainly wouldn’t call any XM Sirius a “monopoly” when it has to compete with free terrestrial radio, not to mention my iPod and CD changer, but I’m still not at all sure how I feel about the latest development in the XM Sirius merger.  Subscribers to each individual service woke up today to new channel lineups that, theoretically, maintain the best of both services. The new XM lineup replaces my beloved Ethel, Fred, and Lucy with similarly-formatted Sirius channels (though it sounds like some of the XM deejays were retained). The new Sirius lineup replaces the Sirius decade channels with the XM equivalents (though after the XM program directors for those channels were laid off, I’m not sure if the quality is going to stay the same).

Having only had limited time to listen to my XM subscription, I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, “Ethel” as a station name has way more character than the prosaic “Alt Nation,” and the deejay during my commute this morning was just awful- I’ll particularly miss the local flavor of the DC-based Ethel deejays. On the other hand, all my preset buttons seemed to give me the same types of music as they did yesterday, so it’s possible I won’t even notice that much. And I’m actually kind of excited about having BBC Radio One where I previously had U-POP. (Yes, I’m a closet Europop junkie. Sorry.)

There do seem to be some weird programming choices- I’m not sure why the “Latino/World” category needs TWO stations for Canadian pop, only one for “Latin/Tropical,” and apparently no channels for music from outside the Western Hemisphere. Wasn’t satellite radio supposed to bring us lots of interesting and quirky little niche programming instead of just more channels of homogenized crap? Do we really need an all-Springsteen, all-the-time channel in any universe?

So what do you think, DC satellite listeners? Are you keeping your sat radio subscriptions? Cancelling to protest the loss of DC-based jobs? Adding new programming from the other network to your subscription? throwing up your hands and going back to free FM?

Comedy in DC, Entertainment
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Comedy In DC: The Election is Over; Now What Do We Laugh At?

 Stephen Colbert at the National Portrait Gallery, by Mr. T in DC

Stephen Colbert at the National Portrait Gallery, by Mr. T in DC

It’s not just the We Love DC bloggers who are nursing their election hangovers, it’s local comics, too. The calendar is a little thin here in early November for booked shows. Nonetheless, there are several ways to get your local comedy on at the DC Improv Lounge this week:

On Thursday, the Improv’s regular Improvisational Open Mic night starts “promptly at 8:05,” and is free to attend. It’s open to groups AND solo performers, who must be there to sign up between 7 and 7:30. The show will be a mix of group improv performances and solo performers randomly organized into improv games. Sounds like a good way to sharpen your improv skills.

On Friday, there’s another installment of Homegrown Comedy. This one will feature Kojo Mante, Mike Eltringham, Matt Sapsford, Keith Irvin, Lisa Fine, Tim Miller, and Brian Parise and be hosted by Mike Way, all very funny people. Tickets are $10.

On Saturday, there’s a show called “Law(yers) Can Be Funny, Too!”  It features a bunch of lawyers I’ve never heard of doing comedy, so I have no idea if they’ll be any good. But if legal humor is your thing, $10 is a cheap way to find out.

And of course, now that we know who the next president is going to be, comics all over the city are going to be writing new political material, now that the gift from the comedy gods known as Sarah Palin will be heading back to Alaska. So don’t forget to check out your local open mics.

Entertainment, Night Life, The District, The Great Outdoors
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Tourism: Halloween in DC

Pumpkin Close Up
Pumpkin Close Up by RSchley

It’s the week before Halloween, and from the looks of the weather forecast, we might see a few creepy thunderstorms before the big day. So, get ready for some Haunted House action here in town as we come close to the big Trick or Treat day. Here are a few ideas for the next week or so to get your Halloweeen on.

Boo at the Zoo

October 23-26 at the National Zoo

Take your kids and trick or treat at the zoo! They’ll have special stations setup for pictures with the various exhibits, and 40 treat stations. Tickets are $15 for FONZ members and $25 otherwise. Saturday’s sold out, so get on tickets for tonight or Sunday or Monday before too much longer, or you might find yourself stuck outside.

Ghost Tour of Lafayette Park

October 27-31 in Lafayette Park

Who’d have thought that the middle of DC was haunted, especially just a block from the White House! There’s a great tour of Lafayette Park’s ghost stories being lead on weeknights through square. Who knew that Lafayette Park was such a neat place? Tickets are $10. Tonight’s tour is sold out, but there’s space left on each of the weekdays next week, including Halloween.

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Comedy in DC, Entertainment
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Comedy in DC: A Week of Free Laughs

Jolene Sugarbaker at the Mic, courtesy Flickr user DCMatt, under Creative Commons
Jolene Sugarbaker at the Mic, courtesy Flickr user DCMatt, under Creative Commons

Comedy in DC is a regular feature here, but it only appears every other week. So you should probably know that you can watch comedy in or around DC pretty much every night of the week for free, if you’re willing to take a gamble on open mic comedy. Every night, there is a group of local comics trying out new stuff, polishing older stuff, and feeding their egos from your laughter at some of the finest dive bars and hotel basements in the metro area. These shows, while less polished than what you’ll see at a club, are more interactive, more spontaneous, and just might convince you to try it for yourself.

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Entertainment, Fun & Games, Night Life, The Daily Feed
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Ghost Tours @ National Building Museum

Courtesy National Building Museum

Courtesy National Building Museum

One of the creepiest places to be this fall will be the National Building Museum. And who doesn’t love creepy around Halloween time? The museum is hosting a lantern-lit ghost tour through through the NBM’s dark hallways, spooky basement, and up to the fourth floor balcony.

The hour-long Historic Hauntings Ghost Tours is led by the ghost of Mary Surratt, co-conspirator in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Along the way, Surratt reveals stories of the other ghosts who call the Museum home, including an irritable horseback rider and mysterious faces in the Corinthian columns. Think history meets creepy fun!

Courtesy National Building Museum

Courtesy National Building Museum

The Tours will be offered from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on October 17, 19, 24, 28, and November 3, 16, and 23. The tours are $12 for Museum members and $14 for non- members; prepaid registration is required. Register by visiting www.nbm.org or calling 202.272.2448

BOO!

Entertainment, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson at Union Station

Heading home from Union Station, I unwittingly fell in step with a group of security personnel, only noticing when their leader addressed them, “She’s over there,” gesturing towards the Postal Museum Building, where an Amtrak motorized cart was negotiating a crosswalk. On board, an older woman accompanied two younger girls. My eyes met briefly with those of the long-haired girl, and I nodded noncommittally before walking on, not recognizing her. She looked very worried.

Suddenly a small gang of wild paparazzi appeared as if out of nowhere, a boorish, swarming mob of shoving, yelling, fanny-packed photographers, circling the cart and clicking away. The girls covered their faces, one of the paps yelled mockingly, “I love you, Lindsay!”, and the security team pushed him and the others aside. It took me about another minute to realize which “Lindsay” the photographer had been yelling at.

So I guess I have a nodding acquaintance with Lindsay Lohan now. I got some quick fuzzy video (above) as the cart retreated towards Union Station with the paparazzi in tow, but she’s barely visible. I felt so bad for her being chased by that repulsive swarm that I decided not to go after her for clearer video. No use turning into one of them.

tittergrrl tells me that Lohan and her partner Samantha Ronson are here for “Hollywood Vibes Come to K Street,” a charity event.

Update: Some of these pap photos include the couple aboard the Amtrak cart in question.

Entertainment, Food and Drink, Special Events, We Love Drinks
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We Love Drinks: O’Shucks

Mead

O’Shucks is a quaint little tavern at the corner of Valley Meade and Meadow Lane, your go-to place for a fall respite, for drinking al fresco under the dappled sun, not too expensive, but certainly tending towards crowded when the weather is nice, attracting a diverse clientele ranging anywhere from families to minstrels, where all sorts of miscreants gather for libations before heading off to jousting and ogling blacksmiths and elephant rides and…

Wait a minute. Not only is that the longest run-on sentence I’ve yet to produce, it’s also not really about a DC neighborhood bar, is it? Yes indeed, it’s We Love Drinks Goes to the Maryland Renaissance Festival! Continue reading →

Comedy in DC, Entertainment
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Comedy in DC: Homegrown Comedy

 

Homegrown Comedy

After all of our CSA adventures this year, I guess you could consider me someone who prefers homegrown stuff.  Green beans I picked myself at the farm. Herbs from Tom’s garden in our backyard. Socks from local sheep.  

So I’m excited to tell you about Homegrown Comedy, a new monthly showcase in the DC Improv Lounge that debuts this week. It will feature 7 local comics, doing 8 minute sets. That’s FIFTY-SIX MINUTES OF LOCAL COMEDY! Plus the host’s set! For only $10! Clearly, this is a fine comedy bargain.  

This week, the show is hosted by Hampton Yount, and features Eli Sairs, Will Hessler, Tyler Richardson, Jake Young, Nora Nolan, Adrian Rodney, and Tyler Sonnichsen.  You may recognize Eli, Hampton, and the show’s producer, Jay Hastings, from our She-Ha Comment Brawl. (All of whom think Aparna is quite funny, thank you very much.) Hampton and Jake have also appeared on XMRadio, during re-broadcasts of the 2007 DC Improv competition finals. 

Having been to several shows Jay has produced or co-produced, I will tell you that this will be one to watch- Jay has high standards, and always seems to put together a good group. You’d better get your tickets now– the Lounge only seats 60 and fills up quickly, especially on a Friday night when there’s overflow from the Improv’s mainstage show. 

Your comedy, like your food, should be fresh and local.

All Politics is Local, Entertainment, The Daily Feed
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Drinking It Up Tonight

bourbon.jpg
Olde Bourbon bottles by brent nashville

Personally, I find myself reaching for the bourbon bottle every time I see Gov. Palin on television spouting a sentence that even Slate’s crack team can’t diagram according to rules of English grammar. However, I understand there are reasons for one to feel the same way about Sen. Biden. Perhaps most recently when he asked the State Senator from Missouri to stand up. Despite being in a wheelchair.

The whole thing has me thinking that drunk as a skunk is the only way to turn on the television tonight. So. Here’s a couple ways to play along with your favorite liquor.

My friends Dori & Tom have whipped up a sweet Palin Bingo card for tonight’s debate. And, We Love DC author Ben Stanfield has whipped up another set of rules for tonight’s debate that will get you utterly soused.

Entertainment, The Hill, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Romeo & Juliet, Redux

Taffety Punk's Romeo & Juliet, photo by Teresa Castracane

Rahaleh Nassri (Romeo) and Kelsey Grouge (Juliet), photo by Teresa Castracane

Taffety Punk Theatre Company sure has guts. The marketing for their all-female “answer” to Shakespeare Theatre Company’s all-male production of Romeo & Juliet had me instantly intrigued: “An hour shorter, a fraction of the cost, and 100% more women. We will totally crush them!” Really, with that kind of chutzpah shown by director Lise Bruneau, how could I not go? And only $10 bucks!

I wasn’t disappointed.

This is a very stripped down production that manages within limited budget and extremely tight space constraints to hit most of the passion points of the play. It’s like watching “The Outsiders” do Shakespeare, using very contemporary speech patterns and body language that help to freshly illuminate the text.

Two outstanding performances in this vein are Rahaleh Nassri as Romeo and Kimberly Gilbert as Mercutio. I swear every time Nassri came on, I thought I heard Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart” – so perfectly did she embody that particular style of hipster boy the girls have a crush on. Oh, he may start out as a bit of a player, but once he’s hooked he’s yours forever. It’s a brilliant bit of naturalistic acting and she’s completely believable as a lovestruck teen. Continue reading →

Entertainment, The District, The Mall
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Tourism: The New Sant Ocean Hall

Phoenix, the Right Whale

Five years ago, the Museum of Natural History got together a group of people with the goal of expanding the Museum’s reach beyond just the land. The incredible wealth of life below the water’s surface, and the great span of the ocean, was a missing spot in the museum’s coverage. Thus, they began the most extensive renovation in the Museum’s History. Tomorrow, the NMNH opens the brand new Sant Ocean Hall. The ceremonies kick off at 11am out front of the Museum, where the Aloha Boys & Halau O’Aulani Dancers, as well as the Tlingit community, who will be performing a drum ceremony to bless the exhibit.

Once inside, the centerpiece is Phoenix, the Right Whale, suspended in the dead center of the exhibit about 10 feet off the ground. Phoenix is a model built off a living Right Whale living in the North Atlantic that scientists from the New England Aquarium have tracked for the last 21 years. Right whales represent one of the North Atlantic’s most endangered species, though their population is on the rebound with some of the more recent preservation efforts.

The Ocean Hall is 23,000 square feet, the largest single exhibit space in the Museum. It features a central corridor that features exhibits on coastal ocean life, and leads back toward the Open Ocean exhibit, featuring a couple of specially displayed giant squid. See, the fire marshall just about had a conniption when he found out the Smithsonian wanted to put a bunch of jars of flammable, toxic alcohol in the middle of a bunch of children. So, they went to the 3M corporation and they came back with their Novec 7100 Engineered Fluid, by the tankful. See, it still allows for neutral buoyancy, and the preservation of the specimen, it just doesn’t catch fire easily, or poison people.

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