For a guy who doesn’t live in one, Mark Stein sure knows a lot about states. The D.C. resident’s book, How the States Got Their Shapes, delves into the geographic biographies of the 50 messed-up pieces of land that made the cut­—with the District’s wonky diamond thrown in for good measure. The book promises to explain the United States’ most pressing border mysteries: Michigan’s floating peninsula, Texas’ bigness, West Virginia’s creepy finger up Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The history of our 4-million-square-mile jigsaw puzzle is a bit of a departure for the local boy: A playwright and screenwriter, Stein’s previous claim-to-fame was writing the 1992 Steve Martin­/Goldie Hawn vehicle HouseSitter. Thankfully, Stein’s better at tracing border lines than he is scripting wacky squatter comedies. This volume isn’t just smarter than his film work­—it’s funnier, too. Stein discusses and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. —Amanda Hess

The boy-and-his-dog tale at the heart of David Wroblewski’s debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, is deeply observed, as symbolically deep as any epic, and most surprising of all, devoid of easy sentiment. After all, the rough outlines of the novel would be perfect for a three-hanky affair: Edgar Sawtelle is a mute adolescent who’s coming of age on a rural north Wisconsin farm where his parents breed “Sawtelle dogs,” exceedingly well-trained service animals, and Edgar has to help keep the family afloat after Dad dies. Wroblewski keeps from drifting into Marley & Me–brand cutesiness partly by way of the plot he’s constructed; the book is a widescreen tragedy, its version of small-town America as suffused with fuckups and failures as good-hearted country folk. More critical, though, is the crisp, unfussy language that Wroblewski employs throughout to temper the high emotions that the Sawtelles—­humans and dogs alike­—go through. It’s a reserved and not especially colorful style, and it seems unique to rural American writers—fans of Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Thomas McGuane’s recent work already have a sense of its straightforward music. And just like those two writers, Wroblewski gets some surprising effects from it. The book’s most powerful sections aren’t noisy, just full of relevant detail, expertly woven—one section depicting Edgar’s solitary journey away from the farm gets so much emotional mileage by merely describing nearly every step he takes, to the point that it’s almost shocking to realize that the kid didn’t really wander so far at all. Wroblewski discusses and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 26, at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. —Mark Athitakis

“Summer Camp Film Series”
Special-effects legend Ray Harryhausen crafts campy creepy-crawlies and marauding saucer men with an imagination unmatched in modern cinema. From the famous skeleton swordfight of Jason and the Argonauts to the expressive apes, centaurs, snake ladies, and Gorgons of Clash of the Titans and the Sinbad series, Harryhausen’s stop-motion masterworks quiver with an otherworldly weirdness that leaves CGI feeling DOA. Making masterful use of miniature models, multiple images, and in-camera optical trickery, Harryhausen’s work is less animation than—as he likes to call it—“kinetic sculpture.” It might be fitting, then, that the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has chosen three B-grade, atomic-age Harryhausen classics for this year’s “Summer Camp” series, which kicked off last week with 1955’s It Came From Beneath the Sea, the age-old tale of an irradiated octopus that puts the squeeze on San Francisco. In addition to marking the beginning of the film fest, It Came From Beneath the Sea also happens to be the first film in Harryhausen’s longtime collaboration with producer Charles H. Schneer. In fact, all of the “Summer Camp” films are Schneerhausen joints: The pair partnered on the cult favorite Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 12), as well as 20 Million Miles to Earth, about an alien hatchling that bulks up and sacks Rome (at 6 p.m. Sunday, June 29). Film scholar David Wilt introduces each movie in the series, which runs through Sunday, June 29, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Ring Auditorium, 7th St. & Independence Ave. SW. Free. (202) 633-1000. —Rin Kelly

If you’re trying to make a statement about moral extremes in modern America, filling a novel with terrorists and pole dancers isn’t a bad way to stay on message. A number of 9/11 highjackers visited strip clubs during their brief tenure in the United States, a detail that Andre Dubus III uses as inspiration for his third novel, The Garden of Last Days. Set in Florida just before the attacks, the novel roots inside the head of numerous characters, mainly Bassam, a jihadist who can’t resist the Champagne room, and April, a stripper whose toddler goes missing during her shift. The brief chapters and Airport-style shifts in perspective make the novel feel like a breezy beach read, but the characterizations are strong throughout—excepting the illiterate bouncer who keeps a book-on-tape of The Waste Land in his glove box, Dubus’ cast is convincingly drawn and rich with emotional detail. Dubus III discusses and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. —Mark Athitakis

Right below the band’s name on the online promotional poster for Band of Annuals’ five-week tour is the phrase “Over America.” Whether that’s simply a reference to the band’s tour schedule—which takes the Salt Lake City-based six piece from Spokane, Wash., to New York and back—or an indication that they’re just done with the U-S-of-A remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: Band of Annuals certainly isn’t over Americana. Tracks such as “Ain’t Looking Back” and “Don’t Let Me Die” on the band’s 2007 release, Let Me Live, show an undying fondness for the kind of folksy, wistful alt-country that defines the genre. Dubbed “best alt-country music to ever come out of Salt Lake City” by a hometown magazine, Band of Annuals provides the perfect soundtrack for some whiskey-drinkin’, porch-sittin’, and yearnin’ for the better days of yesteryear. Band of Annuals performs with Birdlips and J. Guden at 9:30 p.m. at the Red & the Black, 1212 H St. NE. $8. (202) 399-3201. —Matthew Borlik

Russian-born Icelandic conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy will be moving from Japan to Australia to direct the Sydney Symphony, but not before closing out his two week stint in Washington, D.C., with Norway’s greatest, Edvard Grieg. Peer Gynt remains Grieg’s best-known work, far outshining the Henrik Ibsen play he composed the piece to accompany, though its prominence is cemented in a perhaps undeserved association with cartoon camp. Audiences might recall Wile E. Coyote and Sam the Sheepdog clocking into work to the tune of “Morning Mood,” while “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is notable for having inspired the “Inspector Gadget” theme song. Rounding out the kitsch value is actor John de Lancie (“Q” from Star Trek: The Next Generation), who narrates. The National Symphony Orchestra performs at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 5, 1:30 p.m. Friday, June 6, and 8 p.m. Saturday, June 7, at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, 2700 F St. NW. $20–$80. (202) 467-4600. –Mike Paarlberg

Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are the best example of the mechanical elegance of baroque music: a perfectly scripted, rapid-fire conversation carried from instrument to instrument that’s just a little too glib for its own good—like an episode of The West Wing. Which isn’t to say the scripts are nearly as predictible, however; with the Fifth, Bach introduced history’s first keyboard concerto, while the Sixth takes out the violins completely to give the violas—the string orchestra’s perpetual neglected stepchildren—a rare spotlight. Concertmaster Jonathan Carney leads the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through the last and best three of the concertos, plus Bach’s double violin concerto at 8 p.m. Thursday, June 5, at the Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda. $21–$84. (877) 276-1444. –Mike Paarlberg

There has to be a sick clown car of psychosis constantly doing doughnuts inside the mind of Dirty Projectors mastermind and Ivy League dropout Dave Longstreth. How else would he get the idea to re-imagine the Black Flag anthem “Rise Above” as a multilayered tapestry of soothing vocals and loungy loops? At this point, the iconic track is nearly unrecognizable—but it works, mainly because he doesn’t result to the usual gimmicks such as self-congratulatory irony. Longstreth is just creative and ballsy enough to take a mainstay and funnel it through his own fractured perception. The man seems to love nothing more than to flirt with both sides of a paradox, being more than willing to take wild conceptual risks but still provide enough rhythms and enticing choruses to offer up a tiny taste of accessibility. It’s no wonder a place like Yale, with its overly starched Thurston Howell types, couldn’t hold onto this guy.

Dirty Projectors performs with No Kids at 9 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $10. (202) 667-7960. —Maggie Serota

How many viola players can brag that they’ve worked with Jay-Z and Kanye West? At least one: Marla Hansen. Her anomalous association with the hip-hop world is, however, not her only claim to fame. Hansen’s list of credentials including backing the New Pornographers, the National, and pretty much any other vaguely indie-flavored band that has at one point or another required a viola. Emerging from behind the string section to explore her own range of melody, Hansen took care of the songwriting and vocals on 2007’s Wedding Day EP while some of her more famous friends filled in the background. Backed by a slew of collaborators, she plucks her way through six tracks of indie-folk, and now she’s taking the familiarly sunshiny sound on tour. It’s doubtful that Jay-Z will make a guest appearance at any of her live solo shows, but you never know.

Hansen performs with Jens Lekman and the Honeydrips at 8 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $13. (202) 667-7960. —Matthew A. Stern

Not since Queen’s “Bicycle Race” has an artist been so fixated on the two-wheel mode of transportation. But now we have Paul Fattaruso’s latest book, Bicycle, which falls somewhere between prose and poetry, with one sentence, one thought, per page, accompanied by an occasional sketch by Adam Thompson. It is, above all else, an ode to the bicycle, not merely as a machine but as a phenomenon that shares characteristics with so many living and nonliving things that it somehow comes to encapsulate life’s experiences. Fattaruso’s observations, fantasies, and adorations of the bicycle veer from the quirky (“Though it does not complain, my bicycle is clearly uncomfortable on the couch”) to the beautiful (“Already noon, and still the sunlight is thin as Bible paper; women ride through the streets in their nightgowns”). It’s touching enough that you’ll want to go polish your bike for good measure.

Fattaruso reads from and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. at Olsson’s Books & Records, 1307 19th St. NW. Free. (202) 785-1133. —Kim Gooden

If David Fischoff tends to look a little pasty, well, there’s a reason. Namely, he’s a guy who probably doesn’t see the light of day much—and the cold glare of a MacBook screen is a poor substitute for sun. Fischoff would rather seclude himself away in his basement apartment in Chicago or—according to his Web site—his bedroom closet, and play around with the expansive sound menagerie he pulled from the Chicago Public Library. Using that material, Fischoff explores the vast terrain of orchestral pop as a one-man, self-contained band. While the droning synths on his third album, The Crawl, tend to wander into Postal Service territory, he gives his compositions a pulse with drumming culled from hip-hop tracks. It should be interesting to see how Fischoff’s intricate orchestrations translate to the stage, assuming he can handle being above ground for that long.

Fischoff performs with the Known Unknowns, Lode Runner, and E. Joseph at 9:30 p.m. at the Red and the Black, 1212 H St. NE. $8. (202) 399-3201. —Maggie Serota

The “he” and “she” of Amy Sillman’s “Third Person Singular” describes the couples the New York artist sketches and then, on a separate canvas, reduces to abstraction. These black-and-white drawings inspire her bold-hued paintings with touches of cubism, color field, and strong lines that keep the eye darting around the canvas. For Sillman, the observation of her selected couples is as important as the process of painting. “Drawing gave me license to stare at them…looking at them makes me the ‘other.’ My psychiatrist gets a gleeful look on her face when I talk about it,” she said in a dialogue for the museum catalog. The shallow tangles of limbs in her drawings make way for more therapy fodder—Sillman said the hundreds of layers of oil paint on each of the 13 canvases conceal anxieties and feelings about coupledom.

The exhibition is on view from 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. daily to Sunday, July 6, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Avenue & 7th St. SW. Free. (202) 633-4674. —Maura Judkis

What to do when a group of lazy, lunch-delivering schoolgirls brings spoiled food to the school band, causing them all to get food poisoning? Well, force those brats to pick up some instruments and take the band’s place, of course. That’s the premise of Japanese director Shinobu Yaguchi’s 2004 comedy, Swing Girls—and, if it doesn’t necessarily sound like a plan that would lead to a successful high-school concert, it is an idea that led to a successful comedy. The film, which won seven honors at the 2005 Japanese Academy Awards (including Most Popular Film), was among the highest-grossing Japanese films of the year. Like Yaguchi’s previous feel-good flick, Waterboys, Swing Girls is partly based on real events. One can only hope that the source of Yaguchi’s inspiration fared as well in its final concert and learned as many life lessons as the film’s band does before the credits begin rolling.

The film shows at 6:30 p.m. at the Japan Information and Culture Center, 1155 21st St. NW. Free. (202) 238-6949.

Dinaw Mengestu reads tonight from his new-in-paperback debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, which recently won the Guardian’s First Book Award. The novel is set against the shifting backdrop of D.C.’s Logan Circle in full-swing gentrification and follows the life of a young Ethiopian immigrant as he struggles to reconcile his new existence with the one he left behind. Like his narrator, Mengestu immigrated to the states from Ethiopia. He was just two when he arrived in Peoria, Ill., and went on to earn degrees from Georgetown and a graduate writing program at Columbia. A critic in the Times described the novel as “a great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel.” It makes sense that a non-native would have a good take on a city where short-timers rule. Tonight’s reading is free. His next reading, on Feb. 29 with Edward P. Jones at the Folger, is $15.

Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Fri., 2/8, at 7 p.m. Free. (202) 364-1919.

As the latest round of suburban riots indicates, France has done an inadequate job of integrating its immigrants and their children. Yet foreign-born characters are better represented in recent French films than in their American counterparts. Director Pierre Jolivet’s Zim & Co, for example, is set in a multicultural youth subculture as diverse as the film’s hip-hop, funk, and rock score. Zim is an easygoing 20-year-old who plays in a band and pays little attention to France’s abundant laws and regulations. Then he has a traffic mishap on his scooter and tests positive for drugs. Given a choice between jail and work, he lands a job doing deliveries. But the position requires a car and driver’s license, both of which he lacks. Zim—short for Zimbietrofsky—is played by Adrien Jolivet, the director’s son, who was nominated for “most promising actor” at France’s equivalent of the Oscars. The film shows at 8 p.m. at the Avalon Theater, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW. $9.75. (202) 966-6000. —Mark Jenkins

It’s about time that the Dutch alt-rockers of Racoon locked their sights on State-side success. Formed in 1997, the band has spent the last decade crafting a style of fervent balladry comparable to late-’90s alternative radio staples such as Counting Crows and Semisonic. But it’s only with its third and latest album, Another Day, that Racoon has leapt into Holland’s national spotlight—going so far as to receive an official endorsement by the Dutch government. So, now they’re finally getting around to touring the United States; after all, once the ruling body of a band’s home country constitutes a chunk of its fan base, expanding its range of influence across the globe is clearly next on the to-do list. Racoon performs with the Lemonheads and the New Rivals at 8 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $17. (202) 667-7960. —Matthew A. Stern

William Kentridge tackles some serious political topics in his animated films—but, though his method might suggest otherwise, environmental conservation isn’t one of them. Instead of using separate paper drawings for each frame, the South African–born filmmaker creates one charcoal-based drawing, photographs it, then erases and makes changes to specific parts of the original drawing before committing the adjusted piece to film in order to simulate movement. The end result is that the erased portions leave a charcoal trace—a commentary on memory and the passage of time. The short films in Kentridge’s “9 Drawings for Projection” series, which deal primarily with apartheid, and its lasting effects, in South Africa, will be accompanied by a live musical performance of Philip Miller’s original score; also included is a screening of Journey to the Moon, Kentridge’s homage to French director Georges Méliès’ 1902 silent film, A Trip to the Moon. The films show at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 12, and Thursday, Dec. 13, at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, 2700 F St. NW. $38. (202) 467-4600. —Matthew Borlik

Brooklyn’s White Magic cannot heal the sick. Core members Mira Billotte (formerly of D.C.’s Quixotic) and Doug Shaw cannot predict the future, make you a grown-up, or bring your favorite mannequin to life. In other words: White Magic can’t really do any of the things one would traditionally expect from innocent witchcraft. But White Magic is plenty capable of sorcery in the sonic realm. On the band’s full-length debut, Dat Rosa Mel Apibus, Billotte’s voice wafted through the songs like smoke from a burning braid of sweetgrass, and the band carried a spooky sensibility that was alluringly more Aleister Crowley than abracadabra. Yet, for all of the album’s intoxicating charms, sometimes it just seemed too stoned, with a bongload of nonjudicious tamboura-strumming clogging up the stereo field. Luckily, the recently released Dark Stars EP finds White Magic opening up the windows and clearing out a little bit of the smoke. Songs such as “Very Late” see the band traveling toward swampier and bluesier climes while the creaky and slanted “Poor Harold” finds Billotte distilling older ideas into their most enchanting essence. Though White Magic may not be able to help you talk to your dead relatives, they are—at the very least—a bewitching listen. White Magic performs at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 11, at DC9, 1940 9th St. NW. $10. (202) 483-5000. —Aaron Leitko

Edward J. Renehan Jr.’s Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, is the first new biography of the man in some 65 years. In that time, plenty of other historians have examined the Vanderbilt family as a whole, but Renehan focuses solely on the “bootstrapper” who birthed the family fortune through his massive transportation and financial dealings. Perhaps the most weighty new revelations from Renehan involve Vanderbilt’s notoriously erratic final years: According to newly unearthed records from his longtime personal physician, Renehan reveals that Vanderbilt suffered from advanced syphilis. And just in case you think that the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller mean nothing in this day of high-tech billionaires, keep this in mind: When he died in 1877, Vanderbilt left a fortune of some $103 million, which Renehan estimates would represent more than $150 billion in today’s dollars—dwarfing Bill Gates’ current $50 billion fortune. Renehan Jr. discusses and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. at Olsson’s Books & Records, 418 7th St. NW. Free. (202) 638-7610. —Mike DeBonis