Tag Archives: 20003

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Cheap Mini-Burgers For Errybody!

Photo courtesy of
‘matchbox sliders’
courtesy of ‘staceyviera’

Amanda over at Metrocurean tips us off to a fabulous deal at local pizzeria Matchbox. In celebration of 3/6/09, Matchbox will be offering their famous selection of mini-burgers (pictured above looking totally delish) for $3/$6/$9 accordingly. With the new location of Matchbox now on Capitol Hill, there’s even more mini-burger love to go around. (Especially since Matchbox swears a deal this good only comes around once a century.) Oh, and get there early, since Matchbox doesn’t take reservations.

Special Events, The Features
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Got a Date?

Photo courtesy of
‘Jessicart’ courtesy of ‘technotheory’

If you’re clueless about what to do for next weekend – and if you don’t know what the date is, you may want to leave your forest cabin periodically – then you may want to venture down to the DC Riverfront.

Why’s that?

Artomatic. From Feb 13 – 15, Artomatic and the Pink Line Project is presenting three great days of art and music. So grab a date and go!

Oh, yeah, one other thing: Artomatic 2009‘s right around the corner and they’re asking everyone to take a survey to help them prepare for this year. So you art and music lovers, head over and make your voice known!

Monumental, The Features
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Monumental: Daniel Webster

Diorama Close-up 8

The statue of Daniel Webster that stands next to the Embassy of the Philippines on Massachusetts Avenue is largely ordinary. It’s a 12-foot bronze in the classical revival style, a stern and somber great man with his cape over his shoulder. The Gaetano Trentanove bronze was presented to the United States by Mr. Stilson Hutchins, then founding publisher of the Washington Post. The Congress in 1898 would approve a $4,000 expense for the creation of a pedestal for the statue, and that’s what I found most interesting about the Webster Memorial.

Two bas-relief dioramas (okay, how many of you just flashed on the shoebox dioramas you made as kids? All of you? Rock on!) mark the east and west sides of the pedestal and are exquisite bronze representations of two seminal events in the career of Daniel Webster. Who’s Daniel Webster, you ask? It’s okay, I didn’t remember him either. He was Secretary of State for Presidents Harrison, Tyler and Fillmore, serving two separate stints at the head of Foggy Bottom, from 1841-1843 and again from 1850-1852. He was also a Senator from Massachusetts on two occasions, and a member of the House of Representatives from New Hampshire. He was a member of the Whig Party for much of his career, having followed Henry Clay and others in its creation in opposition to President Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. Continue reading →

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 Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Really DC50, Did You Need To Go There?


Really?
Originally uploaded by tbridge

I was walking through Barracks Row today and spotted this ad for bodice-ripper show Gossip Girl on the CW. I recognize the glare makes it hard to see it, but that’s a black guy(1) giving that white girl a hickey, emblazoned with the text, courtesy of the Boston Globe, “Every Parent’s Nightmare.”

Okay, the show has a lot of drinking and some sexual content, but did you really need to go all 1950’s-in-Georgia on us?

Continue reading →