Monthly Archives: September 2011

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Friday Happy Hour: Ginger Smash – Fall Version

This week has been busy, but just looking at my calendar for the next month or so is tiring. (Maybe the rest of the year, actually. I have already gotten enough holiday party invitations that I went ahead and scheduled my own before my guests booked up. Crazy.) In any event, I was grateful for a relaxed Thursday night to come along. To celebrate, I headed to an author reading at 826DC and then walked over to Room 11.

I do not write much about wine in this column, but that does not mean I do not drink the stuff in my “off-duty” time – and Room 11 is one of my favorite spots to sip on a glass of something, which had been my plan when I plopped down at a patio table. However, my friend Iris was working and it is hard to turn down cocktails whipped up by a girl who keeps a Facebook photo album called “Drinks as Friends” where she chronicles the creation of special cocktails to represent the people in her life.
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Sports Fix
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Redskins Preview Week Four: The St. Louis Rams

Photo courtesy of
‘Sam Bradford’
courtesy of ‘Jeffrey Beall’

By now you have heard this game called a must win for the Washington Redskins. I am not sure it is a must win with so many games left in the season, but it is a should win. The St. Louis Rams have been one of the worst teams in football over the first three weeks of the season. In three games they have been outscored 96-36 while the Redskins have outscored opponents 66-53.

The Redskins are coming off a short week and will be playing a second consecutive road game, but those two things should be the only disadvantages the Redskins face in this game. The Rams at 0-3 are desperate to get their season back on the right path and in a division like the NFC West they might be able to get back in the thick of a race if they can pull off a couple wins in a row.

Last weeks game against the Dallas Cowboys was a defensive struggle as both teams failed multiple times to score a touchdown in the red zone and Dallas ended up winning the game on the strength of their defensive play and by being able to capitalize on Redskins mistakes. The St. Louis Rams defense should not provide the same challenges as the Cowboys. The Rams defense is ranked 31st in total yards allowed, 31st in point allowed, 19th in passing yards allowed, and 32nd in rushing yards allowed.

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We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends: October 1-2, 2011

Photo courtesy of
‘Miss Pixie’s Balloons’
courtesy of ‘spiggycat’

Brittany: The weather is finally scheduled to drop down to “sweater” – and, accordingly, the busy autumn social calendar is getting into full swing. Friday night you will find me poolside (hopefully chilly!) for the “Rebirth of Cool” party hosted by art-star Kehinde Wiley, in association with the amazing 30 Americans exhibit. Saturday is Crafty Bastards, an annual must-shop and then the night eventually takes me to U Hall for Clicks & Whistles. Sunday I think I will do some more quality-assurance on the beer, bourbon, and tofu (yay!) at Smoke & Barrel.

Tom: Finally! A weekend without work! Just in time for the marvelous Crafty Bastards fair, where my friend Art will be plying a delicious art project involving maple syrup and a whiskey barrel. This weekend is also a friend’s blood drive, so I might be getting my donate on in Falls Church on Saturday from 8 to 12:30p with the Masons. With no baseball but the playoffs this weekend, it’s finally time to get my search on for a good 49ers bar to watch this weekend’s game in. Anyone got a good lead for me?

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The Daily Feed
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Onion plays ill-advised joke

Photo courtesy of
‘moldy onion’
courtesy of ‘scrapygraphics’

The Onion is a publication near and dear to my heart. They so often catch a good zeitgeist of humor in politics and news, but today’s #CongressHostage stunt is about as far from the usual material as to make me wonder who had taken leave of their senses.  They started with a faux-Breaking News tweet: “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.”

Yeah, it went downhill from there:

 

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Entertainment, The Features
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We Love Arts: Parade

The cast of the Ford’s Theatre Society production of the musical drama “Parade,” directed by Stephen Rayne. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

The hardest part of watching Parade at Ford’s Theatre is knowing that the story of Leo Frank’s trial and lynching in 20th century Atlanta is true. Tony award nominee Euan Morton (Leo Frank) sheds a light on the tragic tale of Mr. Frank and his struggle as a Jewish pencil factory worker ostracized for his faith and Brooklyn heritage.

Director Stephen Rayne’s adaptation of Parade, which is based on the book by Alfred Uhry with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is a passionate musical production with an important message of what happens when people show intolerance for others based on religious faith or skin color.

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Food and Drink
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One Year Later: Estadio

Photo courtesy of
’14/365′
courtesy of ‘ekelly80’
Estadio celebrated its one year anniversary back in July (yes, I’m a little late), and 14 months after it opened, this restaurant continues to draw in the packed crowds.

The most important part of any restaurant is, of course, the food, and Estadio shines here. It’s a member of the tapas crowd serving Spanish small plates, but unlike some other tapas restaurants you will not leave the Logan Circle restaurant hungry.

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Downtown, Special Events, We Love Arts
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National Geographic Live: October 2011

Demon Fish; photo courtesy National Geographic

The National Geographic Live series is back for the fall and we here at WeLoveDC want to share their great lineup of programming with you once again. Thanks to the generosity of our friends at NatGeo, we’ll be again offering two pairs of tickets for our readers to go and experience some great talks, lectures, and programs over at the National Geographic Museum.

For October, there’s some amazing photography programs, authors, and speakers – some of whom you’ll see interviewed here on the site in the coming weeks. If you’d like to win a pair of tickets to an October program, simply list the two events you’d like to attend in comments before noon Friday, September 30. Make sure you use a legitimate email address and your first name. We’ll contact two winners (as determined by random.org) on Friday afternoon. Note that not all programs are eligible for the drawing.

If you’re interested in attending one of these events, visit NatGeo’s website or their box office (800-647-5463), located at 17th and M Street, NW. Keep in mind that parking in NatGeo’s underground lot is free for any programs beginning after 6 pm.

Here’s October’s offerings… Continue reading →

Foggy Bottom, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: 30 Americans at Corcoran Gallery of Art

Kehinde Wiley, Sleep, 2008. Oil on canvas, 132 x 300 inches. Courtesy of Rubell Family Collection, Miami.


At Tuesday night’s preview of 30 Americans, a representative of the Corcoran told the story of how, in 1940, a young, female, African-American artist secretly entered a contest held by the gallery, sending a white friend to drop off the painting because she feared she would not be allowed past the building’s grand front stairs because of the color of her skin. Lois Mailou Jones won the contest and had the prize mailed to her so she would never have to show her face.

Seventy-one years later, Ms. Jones’ painting is held in the Corcoran’s permanent collection and the gallery is hosting a powerful exhibit of contemporary African-American artists which has already generated tremendous excitement in advance of the October 1st public opening.

One of the most-anticipated openings hitting the walls of DC galleries (in a season that is proving to be crowded with buzzed-over exhibits), 30 Americans brings together three decades of influential African-American artists, both household name and lesser-known, in a variety of media. The principle by which they are organized is that all seventy-six works on display (by, in fact, thirty-one American artists) grapple with the concept of identity – particularly but not exclusively race – in modern American life.
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Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Mad Forest

Photo by Melissa Blackall

Entering Caryl Churchill’s "Mad Forest" is a step back into late 80’s Europe during the final years of the Cold War. Forum Theatre sets the mood just right. Pillars with busts of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Communist leader of Romania, loom over the action like big brother. Drab fashions and chain smoking Romanians is reminiscent of a not-too-bygone era. Director Michael Dove spares no expense to create an authentic atmosphere for the show, enlisting the help of local actor Dan Istrate, a Romanian who was there during those historic days. His consultation gives the production a clear authenticity through dialects and mannerisms. If one thing is for certain, Mad Forest will take you into the poverty, oppression, and unrest of Bucharest in 1989.

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Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Trouble in Mind

E. Faye Butler as Wiletta Mayer in the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater production of Trouble in Mind. Photo by Richard Anderson.

If there’s a theme emerging from this year’s theater offerings it’s definitely the play-within-a-play. From Venus in Fur to The Habit of Art, many recent productions have highlighted the rehearsal process itself to uncover uncomfortable truths about power and control. These are all relatively new plays riffing on an old theme, but Trouble in Mind, the 1955 play now on stage at Arena, seems just as fresh. Written by Alice Childress to blow the proverbial lid off racism in the theater of her time, it’s eeriely (and sadly) still relevant. I wasn’t expecting the play to seem so current, but its sharp eye exposes not only racism but sexism and ageism as well. You wouldn’t think a social drama could be a comedy either, but this one’s wit can be deadly and hilarious.

Reading the story of Childress’s struggle with Broadway producers over rewrites is infuriating enough. Watching her character Wiletta Mayer (E. Faye Butler) suffer the patronizing forehead kisses of her director and detail the indignities of having to be grateful to play Mammy roles just drives the discomfort home. Butler’s performance is the touchstone of this production – the war between Wiletta’s ambition to be an acclaimed actress and the betrayal of her integrity carries a constant electric charge.

That Arena, one of the first theaters to integrate black and white actors, is staging a play about an integrated cast, just adds to the frisson. But the weight of history, especially in the District, doesn’t make this a museum piece.
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Sports Fix
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Cowboys defeat Redskins 18-16

Photo courtesy of
‘Tim Hightower’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

Last night the Redskins lost their first game of the season in a dramatic defensive battle between two of the biggest rivals in sports. Depending on the narrative a person went into the game with that is likely to be the story they spin out of the game, and while Grossman is not a good quarterback, Tony Romo did just enough to win with a broken rib, and the two defenses battled down to the wire this isn’t a simple game to diagnose.

While Tony Romo is being lavished with praise this week about how he is a wounded warrior with an enlarged heart Rex Grossman is going to be killed on talk radio, but Grossman passed 37 times and completed 22 of those attempts for 250 yards with one TD and one INT while Romo passed 36 times completing 22 for 255 yards and an INT. Grossman did have the fumble at the end of the game, but when Romo has been in that situation in the past he has done the same thing. The two quarterbacks had comparable games, but one team won and the other lost and that makes one a hero and the other the goat.

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History, The Daily Feed, We Love Arts
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Smithsonian Snapshot: Skyhooking

Skyhook container; photo courtesy National Postal Museum

In the 1930s, U.S. postal officials tried different ways of moving the mail. One technique was called “skyhooking,” which brought the mail to rural towns that had no adequate railway or highway mail routes. Unfortunately, the towns which needed this type of service usually did not have adequate landing fields for planes.

Although a low-flying airplane could simply drop a sack of mail onto the ground, the tricky part was getting ground mail into the moving plane. The Railway Mail Service’s successful on-the-fly mail exchange system provided the inspiration for an aviation experiment. Mail would be “caught” by a plane flying overhead and reeled up into the plane. Of course, catching the mail was not going to be easy. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Photo Op: Scaling the Washington Monument

Photo courtesy of
‘Washington Monument closed indefinitely after rare earthquake’
courtesy of ‘Glyn Lowe Photos’

While the Washington Monument is closed indefinitely due to damage from the Earthquake, that doesn’t mean there won’t be some awesome photo ops this week as a “Difficult Access” team rappels down the side of the 555-foot tall obelisk to inspect the damage. That will mean the group will climb out the little windows at the top, climb up to the tip of the monument, and then slowly rappel down the side to check for cracks and damage. It’s estimated that the inspection will take the team five days to do the inspection, so once they’re spotted, you should have time to rent some long glass and head down to the Mall!

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of
‘windows are my floor’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

I’m fascinated by window washers. Every time I see them setting up at building downtown, I just want to stop and watch them work. I think it’s the combination of being gusty enough to trust your life to a rather thin piece of rope while also having a unique “office” view. The suction cups they use also remind me of 1960s Batman.

So imagine how I feel about Phil’s photo above. Take one part unique perspective, add the mystique of window washers, and then throw in the blown out highlights of the sky; you get one great shot.