Me-blogging

I'm in DC this weekend to go to this and (mostly) to cover this. Monday night, if all goes well, I'll head over to the 9:30 Club for The Faint after the festival ends.

What are you doing?

It Never Ends

Just now seeing this, but the Washington City Paper (which I really kinda miss) has a multimedia feature on last weekend's D-Plan show.

A Life of Possibilities

So it sounds like the second Dismemberment Plan show might have been even better than the first. 23 songs! A double encore! I dearly loved the show I got to see, but I'm kinda jealous...

Oh Fine, Mom. How’s Washington?

It’s nice to be back in town, which, in comparison to even the most laid-back, residential parts of Brooklyn feels suburban, even Southern, like the sleepy, sunny small-town Florida I grew up in. Cars clutter the roads and most of the city is designed for driving rather than foot traffic. A few months ago, this seemed perfectly normal, a basic convenience, even a right. Now it looks like a luxury. I can see why longtime New Yorkers take issue with car ownership, especially the hulking SUVs that lumber down so many suburban back roads. It’s appalling to the shoe-and-subway ethos of much of New York’s population. It reminds me, in some ways, of the in-the-city snobbery residents inside the District displays toward those in Virginia and Maryland—a combination of genuine pride in one’s city and justification for/reaction to paying higher rents for smaller apartments and higher crime rates. (I run into the same city/boroughs snootiness in New York, of course, but so far it seems less common than similar city/suburb sentiments in D.C.).

This song played at DC9 last night after the Dismemberment Plan show. I guess they knew I was there.

I am a time bomb...

The best band in the history of the universe is reuniting for a single show in my old hood. due to some extremely unfortunate, unforseeable circumstances, I missed their farewell show back in 01. I won't miss this.

For the D.C. Nerds

The Philips Collection here in D.C. is about to start what looks to be a pretty wonderful exhibit: American Art and Early Film. From the description:

This exhibition will present American realist painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries side-by-side with the earliest experiments in film. Approximately 100 works, including nearly 60 short films (a few minutes long) by Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, and the Cinémathèque Française, along with works by American masters such as George Bellows, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan, will provide a new context for looking at the artists’ choice and presentation of subject matter. For the first time, film will be fully integrated into the history of American art.

Not sure if I'll make it what with the impending move, but if you're around, go! And if you haven't already made plans to check out the Stanley Kubrick retrospective at AFI, well, what are you waiting for?

The Future of Fusionism

This evening, AFF is holding what looks to be a really awesome panel on the future of fusionism, starring Cato's David Boaz and Brink Lindsey, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, and The New Republic's Jon Chait. That's a lot of smart in one room. Watch the sparks fly at Heritage this evening.