Chris Klimek leads the arts section with his reviews of Scena's harrowing, Estonia-set drama Purge and Penumbra Theatre's play about a short-lived Nat "King" Cole TV show, I Wish You Love. Rebecca J. Ritzel reviews Keegan's zippy take on The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Ben Westhoff reviews the new memoir of punk icon and former D.C. resident Bob Mould. Tricia Olszewski enjoys The Trip, in which Steve Coogan plays, well, himself. And in One Track Mind, Joe Warminsky talks to rapper/producer June G. about his debut mixtape.

Farting with Anticipation: Today is Bloomsday, Dublin's annual tribute to James Joyce's Ulysses. Now, before everyone squeezes into their LBDs and hits the clubs to celebrate, be sure to check in with 11ysses on Twitter. "Stephen from Baltimore" and a team of volunteers will be tweeting the novel all day, 140 characters at a time.

Bits and Pieces: The National Book Festival, which takes place this year on September 24-25, has launched a website for itself (complete with a countdown clock); George Clinton speaks with Around the Mall about the mothership replica he donated to the Smithsonian; TBD's Sarah Godfrey latches on to the startling number of children-of-famous-people playing local concerts this summer; WETA's Around Town lends its signature squeaky-clean treatment to H Street NE; and Georgetown Cupcake is officially upgraded to a reality show Superfund site.

In the Bag: The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs requires 7,861,770 more Twitter followers in order to beat Katy Perry. Come on, DCRA—you got this.

Yesterday on Arts Desk (and everywhere else): The Kennedy Center's production of Follies goes to Broadway.

Yesterday on Arts Desk (exclusively): Birdlips plays a show on our roof!

Some folks from the Washington, D.C., area won awards, as well. Blues-rock singer Mary Ann Redmond won a WAMA award for the 17th time, and country/roots-rock singer Ruthie Logsdon took home her 40th and 41st  WAMA awards. Al Williams, known mostly for smooth jazz these days, took home a jazz musician trophy. Roots-rocker Janine Wilson won the album of the year category.

With the long-troubled Wammies, the artists who do not win or even get nominated are as important as those who do. WAMA leaders have said they sometimes consult "experts" to fill out the nominations slots, and in recent years they have, indeed, reached out to Washington City Paper writers (including me). But they've then largely ignored those suggestions.

Despite pleas from D.C. Blues Society members, WAMA for the second year in a row chose not to select any old-school blues or soul artists for its hall of fame. As previously noted, WAMA also left out all metal bands, traditional D.C.-based Ethiopian, Haitian, and mariachi musicians, new indie-rock labels, southern soul groups, and many more. While those artists have received media and public attention here and elsewhere, the dues-paying, voting members of WAMA are apparently not interested or aware of them.

Besides, as proponents of the Wammies are quick to remind critics, if you don't like the artists that WAMA rewards, you can always pay to join the organization and have a vote next year.

Godfrey has an excellent post on  the hits and misses among this year's nominees. Check it.

I'll add one miss, which I think speaks to the notion that the Wammies privilege known quantities over neophytes.

Check out the Washington Area Record Company category (toward the bottom of the full ballot): Eight labels are nominated. One of them is Dischord, the legendary punk label. It released only one (very good) album of new material this year, and continued reissuing titles from its catalog. Sockets Records is not nominated, even though the local label run by Sean Peoples released five very good albums this year and packed the Black Cat at a showcase last January. The label and its releases earned positive notices throughout the year in City Paper and the Post.

Fine, whatever. There's a reason none of the Wammies' categories employ the word "best." These are WAMA's picks; they're no more a be-all-and-end-all exercise than any group or publication's annual list of superlatives.

But a browsing of this year's Wammies nominees raises enough red flags—like, where's all the good indie rock? It's great that Bob Mould is nominated again, but did he actually release music in the last year? Props for nominating Nadastrom, but why does the list otherwise ignore the EDM scene's banner year?—to suggest that this well-intentioned awards ceremony is pretty removed from much of the great music that comes out of D.C. each year.

I trust my colleagues Mike West and Steve Kiviat will want to add their thoughts.

Meanwhile, Sockets has its annual showcase this Saturday at the Black Cat. Vote with your feet and go.

The press list for the perennially top-selling 9:30 Club's star-studded 30th anniversary show Monday night was too "tight" for even Arts Desk. Luckily, YouTube was all over it: see Dave Grohl with Scream, Teo Leo, the Fleshtones, the Pietasters.

"If these bands didn't like this place, they wouldn't show up," noted host Henry Rollins. "It is the holiday. Many of them have other places to go." Rollins himself had a heckuva time making Monday's big event. "It took two airplanes to get here, I'm very, very sorry," he explained his tardiness to the packed crowd. "I cannot tell you how much it guts me to find out that I missed the Evens, how much it guts me to find out I missed the Slickee Boys."

Rollins fondly recalled the good old days at the tiny original 9:30 Club at 930 F St. NW, before the big move to its current cavernous digs on V Street. "Many of you ancient fans have memories of those great days and that odd stage with that pillar right in the middle, where the band would lose you, you'd lose the band, try to find them...."

My personal favorite 9:30 story? The one about how it's always a full house–even when it's half-empty ("Crowd Control," Show & Tell, 08/27/2004):

That’s because “capacity” is a relative term at the 9:30, which can hold up to 1,200 concertgoers. But whereas most clubs leave it to the audience to fill the available floor space, the 9:30 tailors its floor space to the available audience.

That’s the benefit of having a stage on wheels—a concept developed during the club’s transition from its more intimate digs on F Street NW to its current industry-leading location back in 1996.

“We had this niche at the old club of being the coolest little place for bands to play when they first started,” says promoter Seth Hurwitz of Bethesda-based I.M.P. Productions. “We knew if we went and got this enormous new place that small bands wouldn’t want to play there....So we had to have a place that also worked on a small capacity.”

Enter Chad Housekneckt, I.M.P.’s “director of ambience and atmosphere,” who proposed a solution: “Why don’t we just move the stage back and forth?”

On nights when promoters expect less than a full house, the stage crew rolls the whole performance platform forward. And voilà: What might have seemed half-empty will now look full, and all that excess space is covered up behind a big black curtain.

“Usually, it doesn’t look so good if there’s only 800 people in a 1,200-capacity room,” says Kevin French, manager for D.C. pop-punk outfit Washington Social Club, among others. “But at 9:30 Club, it can look great.”

And French should know: Self-described “peculiarly styled pop” group the Decemberists, which he also manages, drew just 665 for its 9:30 show on June 14. But it looked crowded. The attendance 9:30 reported to Pollstar: “100%.”

Hurwitz says the fuzzy math is all about keeping bands and their agents happy—and thereby keeping those bands coming back to the 9:30.

“If you reported that a band did 400 people in a 1,200-person room, then that band would consider that a failure,” Hurwitz says, “and they wouldn’t want to play there anymore.”