City Lights: This Week's Best
Week of Jul. 2 - 8, 2009
Friday: Mash-ups at the Source
To your average Corcoran student, an “artistic blind date” would mean meeting up with a creative-looking stranger for espresso, gallery-gazing, some vegan food, and maybe an experimental music show. The Source Theater isn’t interested in small talk, though. Its version of an artistic blind date entails playing yenta to filmmakers, choreographers, poets, actors, directors, musicians, and visual artists for a collection of collaborative works for the 2009 Source Festival. Tonight’s medley of cross-disciplinary works includes Listening, co-created by Longacre Lea artistic director Kathleen Akerley, as well as Unscheduled Track Maintenance and Hallmark Dreams. The mash-ups, as they’re called, are just one part of the three-week festival’s offerings, which also include one-act plays and full-length readings from emerging local artists and performers.
THE MASH-UPS BEGIN AT 8 P.M. AT THE SOURCE, 1835 14TH ST. NW. $18. (866) 811-4111.
Saturday: 4th of July Smoke-In
A few weeks after being sworn into office, President Obama told the Oregon’s Mail Tribunethat the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors…is entirely appropriate.” Convinced that one liberalization would lead to another, smokers everywhere rolled off their beanbag chairs and gave one another tepid high-fives. But then just this month California medical marijuana dispensary owner Charlie Lynch was sentenced by a federal judge to a year and a day in prison. As a result, expect more than a few promise-breaker signs at this year’s Fourth of July Smoke-In, D.C.’s longest-running annual pro-marijuana rally. The mile-long parade wraps up with tunes from Lloyd Stuart Casson, San Francisco jammers Ashpool, and Bad Brains singer H.R.’s Human Rights. Organizers advise against bringing “large quantities of contraband” through security—in other words, a spliff or two, toked in moderation, should be enough to celebrate the day.
THE PARADE BEGINS AT 2:45 P.M. AT LAFAYETTE PARK AND ENDS AT 23RD STREET AND CONSTITUTION AVENUE NW. LIVE MUSIC UNTIL 9 P.M. FREE. (202) 251-4492.
Sunday: Jay Reatard at the Black Cat
Aping the loud, fast vocal style and fret-banging of the 1970s Brit punks who crossed the CBGB stage, Memphis native Jay Reatard recalls everyone from the Adverts and Wire to Bauhaus and the Damned. Which is good news for those in an indie-rock diabetic coma. Reatard is one of the few touring punk rock revivalists who can credibly resurrect Richard Hell’s howl and Joey Ramone’s unruly mane, and if you think he echoes those influences too closely, tonight may not be for you. Reatard’s forthcoming LP, Watch Me Fail, probably won’t bring anything new to the punk game, either. But if it’s as faithful in its nostalgia as his debut, Blood Visions, it sure as hell won’t get old.
JAY REATARD PERFORMS WITH TV SMITH AT 8 P.M. AT THE BLACK CAT, 1811 14TH ST. NW. $12. (202) 667-4490.
Monday: Camilo Jose Vergara at the National Building Museum
Camilo Jose Vergara, a photographer and sociologist who won a MacArthur “genius” grant, documents America’s inner cities—buildings, cemeteries, churches—in a way that melds gritty, unpretentious imagery with compelling backstories. Vergara’s eye notices a painted cross on a sign with a design and brushstrokes that suggest Barnett Newman; a stone façade that’s bizarrely off-center; and a church occupying a building with an enormous, garish, and well-preserved electric sign that’s comically dated. (The former appliance store offered both Philco TVs and “liberal credit terms.”) Churches, Vergara found, fill any abandoned spot—a once-stately bank, an old KFC, an abandoned Honda dealership, even an empty lot–and function despite impossibly cramped quarters. The exhibit’s elegiac centerpiece—a time-lapse sequence showing one Chicago church from 1981–2009—merits comparison to the work of its artistic forbears, Walker Evans and William Christenberry: Cars, shopfronts and pedestrians disappear, frame by frame, until the church stands virtually alone in an urban wasteland.
THE EXHIBIT IS ON DISPLAY MONDAY–SATURDAY 10 A.M.–5 P.M. AND SUNDAY, 11 A.M.–5 P.M., TO NOV. 29 AT THE NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM, 401 F ST. NW. FREE. (202) 272-2448.
Tuesday: Ghostbusters at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center
In a move sure to perplex dozens of readers, the National Review earlier this year ranked Ghosbusters at No. 10 on its list of the “Best Conservative Movies.” Citing the film’s dénouement, in which “the solution to a public menace comes from the private sector,” AEI fellow Steven Hayward casts the film as a meditation on, um, free-market exorcism. Would that Drs. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis at his eggheaded best) cared enough to dash off some characteristically wiseass rejoinder—something akin to the “dickless” epithet with which they needle their foe at the EPA (William Atherton). Conservative? Hogwash. Ghostbusters is nearly as antiestablishment as Stripes, except with Ecto-Plasmic Containment Modules instead of Urban Assault Vehicles. Come for the Ray Parker, Jr. theme song, stay for Murray’s not-even-acting insouciance, and brush up on a proton pack’s worth of one-liners in anticipation of the rumored-to-be-in-the-works Ghostbusters III.
THE FILM SHOWS AT 9:05 P.M. AT THE AFI SILVER THEATRE AND CULTURAL CENTER, 8633 COLESVILLE ROAD, SILVER SPRING. $7.50–$10. (301) 495-6720.
Wednesday: The Washington Kastles Play the St. Louis Aces at Kastles Stadium
Tennis fever usually captivates Washington for a week in August when the Legg Mason Tennis Classic is played in Rock Creek Park, but fans who want more opportunities to watch pro tennis up close are in luck this week: the Washington Kastles, D.C.’s World Team Tennis team, play the second match of their 2009 season with a match against the St. Louis Aces. The premise behind making tennis a team sport is that it pairs lesser-known pros with well-known players, thereby balancing the skill levels. Washington’s star this summer is Serena Williams, but since she plays in only a few WTT matches, the Kastles will have to rely on the talent of Leander Paes, the 2009 French Open doubles champion. Their competition from St. Louis consists of similarly ranked players with the exception of their marquee player, Anna Kournikova. Unlike Williams, who’s known for being really good at tennis, Kournikova is best known for posing in FHM and Maxim. Tennis championships might not establish Washington as a serious sports city, but amply endowed athletes jumping and grunting can only help.
THE WASHINGTON KASTLES PLAY THE ST. LOUIS ACES AT 7 P.M. AT KASTLES STADIUM, 11TH AND H STreets NW. $45–$65. (202) 483-6647.
Thursday: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Performs the Score From Psycho
If you’re one of the first-rate violinists playing for Charm City’s resurgent orchestra, you may well dream of playing some killer Tchaikovsky—perhaps that famous Serenade for Strings. Or soloing a time-tested violin concerto—maybe by Khachaturian or Bruch. And when your music director wants to get a bit playful over the summer, how about a little Bernard Herrmann? He’s the American fellow who came up with the scary tunes that accompany the Hitchcock classic Psycho, and his work enables classical violinists everywhere to indulge a sound that they don’t always get to unsheathe for a night of Mozart and Beethoven. The full-on screeeech, that is. Check out the bow-strokers of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as they try to add yet even more drama to the shower scene. They’ll play Herrmann’s score alongside the original voice track. Constantine Kitsopoulos will conduct.
THE PERFORMANCE TAKES PLACE AT 8 P.M. AT THE STRATHMORE MUSIC CENTER, 5301 TUCKERMAN LANE, NORTH BETHESDA. $25–$55. (301) 581-5100.
