No, not in the sense of, say, Metro being on time and stuff. No, I speak of the MetroPerforms! events happening at differing metro stations around town. All the currently scheduled performances are in the District and run through September.

Today kicks off the series at 4:30pm at Dupont Station entrance at Q street with some hand dancing which will continue through to 6:30pm. If you’ve never heard of it, well, that’s two of us. Here’s some video of what is apparently a DC-area unique form of swing dancing.

Auditions are about to begin if you or someone you know would like to be a performer in PG or Montgomery county.

The auditions in Prince George’s County will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 16, at the Mt. Rainier Artists Loft community room, 3311 Rhode Island Ave., Mt. Rainier, MD. Interested individuals should send an email to vrussell@artspg.org to schedule an audition time.

Montgomery County will hold auditions from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, June 29, at Silver Plaza on Ellsworth Drive in downtown Silver Spring. The auditions will be open to the public and performers will have three minutes on stage to impress a panel of judges.

More information at the MetroPerforms! press release. Performances at stations in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties will likely begin in July.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I have been doing some work for a company in Bethesda a few days a week and have really been charmed by the downtown area around Wisconsin Ave. and Old Georgetown Road.

Tastee Diner quickly became my number one breakfast joint for the days I get there early enough to partake. This is a diner like we had in New England, complete with the charm of wood paneling and cooks who banter with the customers. Nothing fancy like the fake Arlington “diners,” whose menus are pricy and the smokers permeate the air with stench. Nope, Tastee Diner has an affordable set of offerings on the menu. It’s not always fast in delivery but it’s consistently good and has grits and jukeboxes.

Grits are almost a necessity if I am going to consistently have breakfast somewhere. Maybe it’s a holdover from my years spent in the real south but I just love grits with my eggs in the morning.

Check it out: old-school jukeboxes like we had at every truck stop when I was a kid. I wasn’t much in the mood for Elvis or The Four Tops the day I took that picture but I hope to return and jam during breakfast playing some good, old-fashioned music. Let’s face it – all music goes with grits, from opera to country to funk.

Bethesda fans out there – what are your favorite things about the town?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Check out the bling bling iPod covers in my hood! Nutting like a Jackson to say cash-money to your Petworth honey.

I don’t know if Junior here is old enough to have a honey, but he was sure proud of his money this morning. Flashing his iPod cover at me as I walked by, he had a convertible currency spring in his step.

He’s only lucky that I had a fresh Franklin in my pocket, thanks to my Kenyan per diem payout. Otherwise, I would transfer his iPod cover into my 1900 M Street NW lunch money!

Still, I give him props, both for the idea and for flashing it to random strangers on his way across town.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

photo courtesy of Story Corps

On my drive into work this morning I was listening to NPR when they played a recording from the Story Corps project. This one was by Jim McFarland and you can read it here. You can hear him read it himself by clicking the listen button on the same page.

What struck me about it was something that for him, I suspect, was a minor detail. “”When we got to D.C.,” McFarland recalled, “we would get out of an integrated car and we’d go into an all-colored car.” Then a resident of New York City, now a resident of Atlanta, I wonder if he thought much about this transition point being in D.C.

Hearing his story, however, I think about it. The location where this family had to make the switch from an integrated car into one where they were segregated based on the color of their skin was here in our nation’s capital.

I don’t know for sure about the arrangement of the city in the middle 50s, less than two decades before I was born. I presume the location where he came into and changed trains was Union Station. While getting out of one car and into the segregated one he would have been less than a mile (as the crow flies) from the National Archive, where these words are on display. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

It’s both inspiring and sobering to realize that it wasn’t so long ago.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

We all know that there’s a relationship between the Pentagon area and water torture, water boarding and all that other stuff that was once in the news but has since been eclipsed by talk of American Idol. Here’s a new twist on that old, tired theme.

These poor, innocent water bottles were squeezed into displays in a Pentagon City vending machine. Yes, folks. Right here in America, before our eyes and nobody does anything. And we call this the land of the free.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

This is the future of Dr Dremo’s in Arlington: tall dark condos.

Out with the cool and funky bar that might look like either a junkyard or abandoned building and in with cold and impersonal high rise of property value pimps.

Yes I will miss the home of the Psycotronic Film Society and a few too many good times in Northern Virgina when it is gone.

No one will celebrate yet another condo construction project. Especially at the expense of a damn good tap house.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of an invitation to the Egyptian Embassy.

There it was all dark suits and gold accents as we attempted small talk under high ceilings, debating politics, making business.

Interestingly, while Egypt is very Muslim, Egyptians go to great lengths to show they are progressive, or at least tolerant. The wine was good (free) and there was not a burka in sight.

Nor was a loo. After an extended hunt, including a tour of the kitchen, a toilet was found, under the stairs, behind two doors.

Business in Egypt is only marginally less confusing.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Someone left a smelly box on a counter at the Postal Museum Post Office, prompting an evacuation while bomb and hazmat teams checked out the package. Turned out it was two cans of old spinach and a used diaper. So, this of course raises two questions: which of you jokers thought it would be a good idea to send that, and did the smell reach up to Capitol City Brewing Company?

Or was this someone trying out his own version of Postal Experiments? Didn’t work, dude.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The DC Media Makers are meeting this evening at the Cleveland Park Library to discuss online media, social media making, collaborative projects and citizen journalism. Most of the folks who attend the meetings are there to work with online video but other types of podcasters, bloggers, web folks of all stripes and even uninitiated netizens are welcome to come, share, meet and learn.

DC Media Makers is devoted to promoting web 2.0 media literacy and production skills. Everyone is welcome, from pros to novices. If you want to learn about video on the web, or want to share your existing knowledge, this is the group for you.

When: 6:30-8:30, Thursday, June 14th
Where: 2nd level stacks, Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Metro: Cleveland Park stop, Red Line, (library located just south of the metro stop)

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

serenditpitous image courtesy
of Least I Could Do

My darling girlfriend commented to me yesterday that she couldn’t believe none of us were writing about the 54 million dollar pants lawsuit. I told her – as I am telling you – that I can’t speak for the other authors, but the reason I haven’t mentioned it is because I couldn’t possibly care less about the whole thing.

It’s painfully obvious that it’s being driven by someone who is somewhere between socially twisted and overtly disturbed and to me that just makes it more sad than anything else. If you’re interested in the whole affair there’s been no shortage of coverage over at DCist and the WaPo’s Marc Fisher has written about it numerous times. Really, you’d be better served looking at his entire feed history – there’s more links than I care to dig up.

Most depressing, and the reason that I have avoiding talking about it, is that I have no doubt that this one little aberration is going to be fodder for the grinding of thousands of axes. Tort reform proponents and opponents will be all over it and use whatever result comes out of it as evidence that they Are Right. Worse yet, they’ll generate a metric frak-ton of words explaining in painstaking detail why they are right and it offends my sensibilities when someone passes up the 1,000,000 horses in order to use the one zebra to make their point about hoofprints.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

How hot is it in Washington DC today? Hot enough for a shave and a haircut?

While the lad here is too young to get a shave, he is losing his fade for a summer buzz cut. I was in Fusion Day Spa too, for my own summer-close trim.

Its just too hot to have long hair in a DC summer!

Which brings me to today’s question: do you get shorn in the summer? And if not, why not? Outside those that need long hair for their glam-fashion jobs, I don’t understand why people keep long hair in the summer.

Its too humid to do anything with it and if you wash long hair, it will take hours to dry. Worse, you sweat way more with long hair than short, and the stink stays in long hair too.

Summers are made for short hair.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Councilman Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) was acquitted on all charges late yesterday, his lawyer’s defense of his May 2006 arrest for drunken driving complete. Barry was also acquitted of misuse of temporary tags and driving an unregistered vehicle.

Afterwards, Barry was heard to have said “This was an effort by the government to embarrass me and break my spirit.” No, it had nothing to do with the smell of alcohol, or the failure to abide by the officers’ request. Nope, nothing to do with that.

So, the other big question was, who was in the car with him? He says he won’t reveal who it was, but if you examine the criteria (black, female legislator from Oklahoma), there are just a few options. Anastasia Pittman, Judy Eason Mcintyre, or Constance Johnson… wonder why none would come to his aid?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

photo courtesy of Mamchenkov

Another school year, another story singing the praises of some kid who made it his entire academic career without ever staying home a day. This year’s wannabe Typhoid Mary is Justin from Brentsville, near Mansassas.

Do we really need to run these stories every year promoting this irresponsible behavior? These guys grow up into those tools who show up for a meeting looking like death warmed over, sneezing into their hands and then touching things in the workplace. On behalf of all the rest of us who did take sick days, many times because we caught something from you when you wouldn’t stay the frak home when you were almost dead and mightily contagious, I say THANKS FOR NOTHING.

The streak was in serious jeopardy in elementary school when Forman’s third-grade teacher nearly sent him home sick.

“My teacher came up to me and said, ‘Justin, you are turning green, you need to go home.’ And I was like, ‘No, just let me stay for a little longer.”

Someone find me that teacher so I can kick him/her in the shin. From the CDC:

Stay home when you are sick.
If possible, stay home from work, school, and errands when you are sick. You will help prevent others from catching your illness.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Are you in international development? Did you squeeze into the DevEx happy hour at 18th Street Lounge today to see and be seen?

I went in early, said “hi” to a few peeps and then split as the crowd got thick. “How thick?” you might ask if you’re not in the field.

Outside, this line snaked down the block, and even when I left, the Lounge was at fire code violation levels of “let’s talk about work” meet & greet overload.

Great if your looking for a new job or a hottie date, horrible if you refuse to wait 20 minutes for a $6 vodka tonic for summer

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The AFI Silverdocs schedule is so big is probably won’t fit in your browser window – it’s certainly too wide for my wee little laptop screen. They’ve coded up a web page that requires a window over 1400 pixels wide to show all the things going on, including a free outdoor screening of Stop Making Sense tomorrow at 9p outside the theater. You may ask yourself, why a big suit free screening? How do I get there? It’s right over here, dude.

I categorically deny that this posting started out as a whine about web design.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Look what I found emerging from 13th Street just on the south side of U Street NW: trolley tracks.

Yes, DC’s history shows itself in asphalt. The past, coming back to pop a tire one day soon. If you look in the north side of U Street, 13th shows trolley tracks too, but not so much.

I knew of the trolley that ended in Mt Pleasant and the tracks in Georgetown. Where else are tracks visible in the street?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The DC Voting Rights Act has survived its trip through the Senate Committee by a 9-1 vote, with only Senator John Warner (R-VA) dissenting. Three more Republican Senators dissented from the party line and voted with the Democratic majority on the committee, possibly signifying a more broad support for the DC Vote in the rest of the Senate than initially expected. Will it be 60 votes?

Heck if I know, but I’d at least like to see a filibuster attempted instead of just dropped like so many hot rocks.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I first became aware of Mika the same way I’ve been finding all my musical obsessions lately- listening to Ethel on XM. I was driving to my soul-destroying then-job one morning in early February, trying not to let the dread impose on my commute, when a bouncy song called “Grace Kelly” floated through my speakers. I nearly drove off the road, so involved was I in getting my rock on. If you can imagine Freddie Mercury reincarnated as an early-20s British/Lebanese kid with crazy curly hair (okay, not a stretch) with some vintage Elton John, George Michael, and ALL of the Scissor Sisters mixed in, you can probably imagine what the rest of the album is like.

I finally got to see him live last night at a sold-out show at the 9:30. I couldn’t tell you about the opening act because, well, I skipped it. But Mika himself did not disappoint.

One of my favorite things about Mika is that even as he’s engaging with reckless abandon in pop theatricality, he does it without a trace of irony, while both acknowledging it and inviting the listener to abandon their hipster pretense and just enjoy the music for what it is.You can’t help but accept the invitation. (edited to add: Via Marc in the comments, here’s a post by the “Big Girl” dancer. I thought that was Mika’s family sitting near us…)

(photo courtesy Mikasounds.com)

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading →

Hump Day isn’t just for humping anymore. If you are in Bethesda on Wednesdays, you can catch some free midday concert culture from 12-2 at Bethesda Place Plaza at 7700 Wisconsin Ave.

And to match, the day after Hump Day is no longer just the day after you humped. To celebrate the boot knocking from the day before, take your special sweetie out for an after-work concert from 6-8 on Thursdays at Veterans Park at the intersection of Norfolk Ave. and Woodmont Ave.

Both series of concerts run through the end of August, so there’s plenty of opportunity left to get down there, hear some good free music and enjoy the heart of summertime Bethesda. Be sure to bring your dancing shoes and a sports bottle filled with margaritas or your other favorite drink. Just be sure not to let on what you’re drinking or else you might be spending longer in Montgomery County than you had anticipated.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I went to the Borders near my home the other day and right outside the door is this poor, poor trash can. Apparently legions of folks with their exciting new purchases in hand have stopped here to pry open that jewel case and peel off that annoying sticker once they were ten feet outside the store.

I was tempted to peer closer and read the labels to determine what people couldn’t wait till home or their cars to listen to but the smell and social stigma associated with lingering around a trash can were just too much for me.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs