If you’re looking to get your same-sex loving ass on the dance floor, but you want more to dance to than just Madonna remixes, The New Gay may be able to help. The site's infamous Homo/Sonic dance party covers more than just the latest house hits and chart-toppers; the all-ages, queer-centric DJ night covers tail-shaking tracks from The Rapture to The Blow, with an emphasis on non-straight artists. Sure, Lady Gaga might occasionally show up on the playlist, but she’s far more bearable sandwiched between Peaches and Magnetic Fields. The beats start dropping at the Black Cat Saturday night. 9:30 p.m. $10.

But in today's WaPo Style section Jacqueline Trescott and Dan Zak asked two dozen of D.C.'s actual tastemakers to list their favorite performances and cultural moments of 2010. The picks by this assortment of artists, theater directors, musicians, and even Metro Police Chief Cathy Lanier ranged from the Adams Morgan Day Festival (where the addition of a mayoral campaign to this year's edition excited Anacostia Art Gallery owner Juanita Britton) to Lady Gaga's June concert at the Verizon Center (Signature Theatre artistic director Eric Schaeffer's pick) to the opening of the new Arena Stage (a favorite of chef-restauranteur Ashok Bajaj).

A few of the picks verified some of the arguments made in City Paper's Music in Review issue last week. Trescott and Zak got ahold of Christoph Eschenbach, the National Symphony Orchestra's new musical director who debuted in September before decamping to a Parisian sabbatical only a month later. True to form Eschenbach, couldn't muster a local pick, offering only a production of a Rodion Shchedrin work by the Kirov Ballet when the St. Petersburg-based company visited the City of Lights. But don't get mad at Eschenbach for blowing us off; he did enjoy a backstage conversation with the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, whom he calls "the greatest ballerina after Anna Pavlova—a living legend!"

DJ and U Street Music Hall co-owner Will Eastman echoed City Paper Arts Editor Jonathan L. Fischer's cover story on Moombahton, saying Dave Nada's nascent brand of dance music "really...hit a nerve in the dance music community." That is to say Nada, who departed for Los Angeles last month, "made it really sexy" and gave it "a lot of swag" by blending house sounds with reggaeton, Eastman told WaPo today.

Most people queried for this roundup gave an out-of-town choice in addition to their D.C. pick (except Eschenbach, of course). The New York performance of John Logan's play Red got some love from Phillips Collection director Dorothy Kosinski and Studio Theatre artistic director David Muse, while Philippa Hughes found the Takashi Murakami exhibit at Versailles "mind-blowing."

As for our chief of police? "I can't remember the last time I saw a movie or a play," Lanier told The Post.

Bored by the home-made signs, disappointed that I could barely see and hear what was going on onstage, and hoping to escape the crush of the crowd, I wandered into the west building of the National Gallery of Art on Saturday, where I wasn't the only person who'd come to the National Mall for the Rally that day to restore sanity and/or fear. The atrium was packed, and I wrote as much in Washington City Paper's live-blog of the day's events.

Most of the crowd, a volunteer told me, seemed to be there in search of bathrooms and/or food—though certainly some art was being consumed, including by some people in fake costume and carrying fake signage.

So: What did the rally and its estimated attendance of 200,000-plus mean for the museum? On Saturday, the National Gallery drew 35,186 visitors, according to museum numbers sent to me by Deborah Ziska, NGA's chief of press and public information. Compare that to the Sept.4-Oct. 23 Saturday average of 14,594. The previous Saturday, the National Gallery drew 18,719 visitors. This coming Saturday, it'll break 700,000 because of the Lady Gaga appearance I just announced in this sentence.

Of course, there are many variables that affect attendance, like "holidays, weather, tourism flow, gallery exhibitions and programs and promotion, events (good and bad) that we have no control over (Marine Marathon, Inaugural, street festivals, rallies, demonstrations),etc., etc.," Ziska writes. "Having said all of that, many of the larger rallies and demonstrations within our vicinity do increase our attendance, whether people are coming for the art and/or amenities (restrooms and restaurants and shops)!"

Plus! As far as I could tell, the lines for the NGA's bathrooms were somewhat shorter than the lines outside for Jon Stewart's Porta Potties.

Miss Alaska takes aim.

The ladies competed in an evening gown and talent contest. Sarah Palin’s talent included shooting a stuffed moose perched on a roof across the street. “That was kind of a moment,” says Dunn. “We really are ridiculous. That’s the whole point—to have fun.”

This year’s show promises to be just as fun—maybe more so. The premise? “Hobart Street’s Got Talent,” a takeoff on shows like “America’s Got Talent” and “American Idol.” Three judges (Simone Bowel, Ellen Degenerate, and Charon Unborn) will give the thumbs up or thumbs down to four contestants—characters patterned on Lady Gaga (Burkhardt, rumored to wear a silver body suit and matching go-go boots), Susan Boyle (Dunn), Prince Poppycock (Katey Shirey), and Rihanna (Felicia Howard).

Dunn as "Susan Doyle."

The show has gotten more popular over time, so much so that this year Hobart Street will be closed to traffic for it. Last year, Burkhardt says he was amazed at how many people braved the driving rain to watch their version of “A Sound of Music” (complete with the Pope giving Liesl an exorcism). “‘Those people are crazy!’ we thought,” says Burkhardt. “Of course, we’re crazy—but we knew that.”

Much goes into the show’s preparation, and there are always obstacles to overcome. One issue has been some of the performers’ fear of heights or worry that they will fall off the roof. Generally, they overcome these fears for the sake of the show. Burkhardt admits to “getting a little lubricated beforehand” so he can do it. “I couldn’t get up there otherwise,” he says.

Burkhardt channels Lady Gaga.

Of those involved in the production, many cite the sense of community that emerges from it as a particularly positive outcome. “It’s a small town, neighborly kind of thing,” says J.T. Roy, 49, this year’s artistic director and a longtime participant. And for the upcoming show, even more of the street’s residents are taking part. Lance Kramer, 26, filmed some of Hobart Street’s kids performing their choice of talent, from playing the piano to exhibiting ninja moves. This filmed segment will make up the first part of the show in which hopefuls are axed, and for Kramer it demonstrates “a whole street working together—the best embodiment of a row house community.”

Dunn concurs. “We have such a unique neighborhood,” he says. “And this is a wonderful way to celebrate it in a fun-loving, non-judgmental kind of way.” Burkhardt notes that Mount Pleasant’s quirky zeitgeist is what spurred him and Dunn to do the show in the first place. “This is an expression of our love for our neighbors and neighborhood,” he says. “Maybe we’d have been induced to do such a thing elsewhere, but I somehow doubt it.”

1708 Hobart Street NW, Mount Pleasant, 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Photos courtesy of Lance Kramer and Abby Moser.

Coverage of the show was restricted by Gaga herself to print-only, though according to the locked-out TBD, the kids at Brightest Young Things managed to score a photo pass. BYT didn't have anything at the time of this post, but maybe they'll live up to the Twitter queen's demands and use the gallery to launch a new printed quarterly.

The Kennedy Center announced its list of honorees this year, much to the annoyance of WCP's Chris Klimek. Topping the list is Oprah Winfrey, who will presumably be recognized for promoting junk science and vapid memoirs revolutionizing television. Also receiving a Kennedy Center award will be Merle Haggard, choreographer Bill T. Jones and Broadway composer Jerry Herman. Oh, and Paul McCartney, too. But wait! Wasn't Macca just here to insult the last president receive the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song? Klimek points out that most Kennedy Center Honors include at least one recipient more annoying than the others, and while Oprah certainly meets the description, I'd like to hear from him why Mel Brooks was last year's. WaPo has a rundown of some of the more difficult honorees, and while Mel might have been difficult to book, he's no Vladimir Horowitz.

The start date for the Washington portion of Transformers 3 is still undetermined according to the District's Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, but if you're a hopeful extra who likes to drive, get ready for your shot at fame brush with death! Washingtonian's Alyssa Rosenberg, writing at TheAtlantic.com, suspects that the conditions that led to an extra at a Hammond, Ind. shoot wound up with a metal object "[slicing] through her skull" are de rigueur for Michael Bay.

In the department of fictional head injuries, WCP's Joe Warminsky saw Machete over the weekend and came away disappointed that there were too few decapitations. Warminsky seems to be OK with the overall body count, but the decapitation-to-murder rate is insufficient.

We've gone from the reigning queens of Twitter and television to bloody head wounds, so let's finish this on an upbeat note. Experimental folk-rockers Akron/Family play the Black Cat tonight at 8. So if your head is still hurting from Lady Gaga or Oprah or a movie stunt gone horribly wrong, prepare for, in the words of WCP Arts overlord Jonathan L. Fischer, "at least a glimpse of the light."

Of course, because the term has been around for awhile, there is a food blog named after it.

1. Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Colonial Southeast America, 1650-1725, by Timothy Paul Grady.
I was having dinner (or was it lunch?) the other day with a friend. We had sushi (unless, maybe, we had Mexican). After lunch, we went for dessert (cupcakes? Or was it frogurt?) and then to a movie (Twilight? Or maybe Inception?) Then, on the way home, I was like, "Hey, you never told me what your Ph.D. dissertation is about..." and my friend was like, "Oh, it's about the colonial encounter..." and I was like "Wait—your field is anthro, right?" and my friend was like "Nah, it's Latin American studies..." and I was like, "Cool." And on we drove through the streets of Washington, D.C., two well-fed, well-entertained members of the landed gentry living our bourgeois lives with nary a thought for the oppressed aboriginals upon whose blood, sweat, tears, and general abasement our society's so-called "liberties" had been constructed. We were listening to the new Lady Gaga single too, that catchy one called "Rape of Mother Earth."

2. Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception, by Pamela Meyer.
I could have used this book at the Bellagio last week when some greeze ball bluffed me out of a $500 pot. How did he know that I, a short, bald, waifishly thin emoish 30-something, wouldn't have the guts to call a blatant overbet by a loose-aggressive player when I was holding a mere two pair when there's a flush on the board? He ran me off that hand holding a measly king high! I've never been more humiliated in my entire life—well, except for the time I got caught trying to remove a splinter from George Michael's left buttock in that public restroom in the middle of London. I'd never even considered that a splinter could so deeply penetrate the fleshy part of a pop icon's backside.

3. The Concise Dictionary of Dress, by Judith Clark and Adam Phillips. Edited by Robert Violette. Photography by Norbert Schoerner.
You are what you wear, et cetera, et cetera...

4. Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade, by Justin Spring.
Gender theorists and gay historians take note: Sure, I'm into reading about gay rights before Stonewall, but if there's a bunch of pictures of mustachioed dudes with old-school tattoos of bluebirds and anchors and "HOLD FAST" on their knuckles, I'm way more likely to pick up a homopositive tome.

5. When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness, by Rowan Ricardo Phillips.
Did I ever tell you about the time I was the only short white dude with a lot of opinions about politically correct speech in an otherwise mostly-minority-female African-American poetry class at my hippie liberal arts college? No? Oh, right—that was expunged from my permanent record.

Queering Sound costs $10 and takes place at 7:00 PM on Saturday June 5th at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.