While Fringe and Source are both experimental laboratories and incubators of new talent, they differ in that Fringe is uncurated, whereas Source hand-picks talent from around town to create new, exciting projects. For this final week, Source commissioned one-acts from standout playwrights behind last year’s 10-minute plays. OK, I’ll admit I went to see Group F last night because I’m a huge fan of HBO’s “The Wire” and I wanted to see Delaney Williams (the artist formerly known as Bill Delaney) in Her Love Was Vertigo.

Willams plays John Fox, an unapologetic womanizer living lay to lay, and (as if that weren’t bad enough) trading securities to manipulate markets as shamefully as he manipulates people. Actually, he’s a kind of likable guy. We meet Fox mid-hangover, as he charms a cuckolded would-be murderer (Daniel Eichner) into being his biographer. Enter two seductive women (Annie Grier and Kimberly Schraf), and cue the love triangle.

Playwright Estep Nagy has a knack for snappy repartee, but in this staged reading, actors, particularly Williams, struggled to deliver lines with consistent motivation, sometimes falling flat (maybe by their third try on Sunday they’ll learn the script). The act runs an hour and forty minutes; I’m no editor, but Fox’s paroxysms on economics didn’t do it for me. The plotting and sex, however, never got old.

By contrast, The Mating of Angela Weiss, by Renee Calarco, was about a lack of sex. Angela (Yasmin Tuazon) learns timing is everything as she tries to breed captive pandas (given their sex drive, it’s no wonder they’re almost extinct). As much as she wants a baby panda, her mother, who adopted Angela from China, wants to get pregnant. Poignant performances illustrate the parallels in their lives as the play seamlessly jumps to Angela’s childhood and back. Barbara Papendorp and Francisco Reinoso round out other characters (including the best pandas I’ve ever seen portrayed on stage). This endearing gem alone is worth the $18 admission.

GROUP F OF THE SOURCE FESTIVAL ONE ACT PLAYS PERFORM JULY 10TH AT 8 P.M. AND JULY 11TH AT 2 P.M. AT THE SOURCE, 1835 14TH STREET NW. (866) 811-4111

Why the whole world loves/hates the Washington City Paper, Michael Jackson's immortal soul, and some Friday zen, after the jump.

• Howie "the Howitzer" Kurtz sums up what Gawker called a "beautiful" cover thusly: "...it pushed the journalistic envelope with a three-word phrase in the cover headline, which was posted online Tuesday. The phrase--which can be rendered here only in sterile, Starr report-like language--is a colloquial term for an act of oral sex performed on a man. The headline sparked a wave of angry calls to the alternative weekly, complaints from a handful of distributors and charges of racism from Barry supporters yesterday." One of those offended was this lady, who, for lack of a name, we will call "Pinker Bell." Word around the office is that Pinker Bell lit into Jason Cherkis' ass over that cover (that blurry thing to the right is Cherkis). Is that funnier than the cover itself? YOU DECIDE! Editor Erik Wemple makes an appearance and defends the decision really well (seriously). Only problem with Kurtz's column: "City Paper trumpeted its cover online as a "collector's edition"--a bit of a joke, since all of its 72,000 copies are free." Actually, if he cared to look inside the front cover, he might've seen that we doubled the newsstand price (DOUBLE-FREE) for this special collector's edition.
• NEXT: Is Michael Jackson in Heaven? All the MJ coverage made me gag, but this Daily Beast hypothetical by the guy who writes all those religious pocket books considering Jackson's soul is just too good to pass up: "God’s pity aside, Jackson exhibited behavior one doesn’t expect from the heaven-bound, from his alleged drug addictions to his accused pedophilia. Still, those don’t automatically exclude him from paradise, says Chris Seay, the pastor of Ecclesia Houston and president of Ecclesia Bible Society. “We shouldn’t be surprised to find someone like Jackson in heaven,” he says, calling attention to biblical passages like Matthew 7:21-23. “Jesus makes it most clear that we will all be surprised to see that the beautiful and upstanding people we thought were ‘locks’ for heaven did not make it in, and the people we thought hell was created for might have the largest palace on our golden street.”" My take on Seay's philosophy is that to get into Heaven, we should all commit a sex crime right before we die; groping your Hospice nurse should do.

• And now a video for your summer, courtesy of Cinco products:

Prototype 373-G
Trey Graham says:
See it if: You’re attracted to frivolity for its own sake — or you’re an sucker for tight ensemble work.
Skip it if: Whimsy makes you queasy, and no quantity of stagecraft will settle your stomach.

Born Normal
Glen Weldon says:
See it if: Your bookshelf leans more Chris Adrian and Kevin Brockmeier than Clive Cussler and Nicholas Sparks.
Skip it if: In your estimation, the complex psycho-social terrain of the Normal-Child-in-Wacky-Family dynamic has already been mapped, and definitively so, by The Munsters.

Slave Narratives Revisited
I say:
See it if: You like stuff that’s good.
Skip it if: You dislike stuff that’s good.

Carnal Node
Brett Abelman says:
See it if: You’ve never seen anything with more risk - and possibility of reward - than a bar band.
Skip it if: You don’t go listen to music live unless you can already sing along to the CD.

Children of Medea
Sheffy Gordon says:
See it if: You love your mother.
Skip it if: You’re a budding female playwright and dramatic solo performer but you can’t handle new competition in town.

I'm actually at Fort Fringe as I type--formerly known as A.V. Ristorante Italiano--which the festival folks have artfully transformed into their guerilla headquarters, complete with offices in a crumbling bar, a two-tiered tent deemed the Baldacchino in the parking lot, and a permanent black box theater in what used to be a meat-curing pantry.  I will be blogging live from here until the shows begin this evening--so if you want to know if the toilets will be working in time for the opening night party later, you know where to look for updates.

Oh yeah, there's a party: 9 PM at Fort Fringe, 607 New York Avenue NW.  But really this festival is all about the performances, so turn off your computers, get off your rolling chairs, and go check out a show or two or twenty.  Then visit Fringe & Purge and let everyone know what you thought.  

Ever since, we've been positively inundated with questions, compliments, and offers of a decidedly salacious nature. Rather than responding individually, I've decided to offer some answers right here, for all to see.

After the jump:

Is Fringe & Purge my go-to place for the inside scoop, the low-down, and/or the nitty-gritty on this year's Fringe Festival?

Yes. Yes it is.

Will Trey Graham and Glen Weldon, perennial Fringe & Purge all-stars, be back and better than ever?

Yes. Yes they will.

Will there be totally awesome videos, photographs, reviews, commentary, and more?

Why yes, now that you mention it.

Is it true that Brian Reed blew off a date with Miss America 2006 to attend the final Fringe Happy Hour?

Brian, I'm not going to dignify your feeble ploy by responding to this or any subsequent red herrings.

Enough of this pitter-patter; watch the sneak previews below:

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version of this video.