Snow

Several wimpy area school systems will be closed today (Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel), but not the District. The District is badass. Opening on time!

It should turn nice this afternoon. But look into the Capital Weather Gang's Snow Lover's Crystal Ball: There's more stuff coming! "At the moment, everything remains on track for a major winter storm beginning during the day Friday and continuing into Saturday," the gang reports. "A substantial accumulation of snow is becoming increasingly likely."

Who's organizing the snowball fight? Detective Baylor?

In other news, today is Tai Shan's last day on view at the National Zoo before he's FedExed to China. The underwear bomber is cooperating. And the Oscar nominations are out ("Be still, my horrified heart," writes Tricia Olszewski, Washington City Paper's film critic. "We perhaps all knew it was coming, but now it’s official: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences believes that Avatar was one of the best films of 2009.")

Metro riders at Shady Grove on Monday night were wondering what the crime tape and white sheet were all about. The Examiner reports that a 22-year-old man killed himself by jumping from the seventh floor of the parking garage:

It was the second major incident in three days that the agency did not share with the public. On Saturday, a maintenance vehicle carrying 20 workers slid on an icy rail into a truck on the Red Line between the Medical Center and Grosvenor-Strathmore stations, causing a chain reaction that damaged four trucks. No one was injured, but the agency did not alert the public.

It also failed to notify its safety oversight group within two hours, as required.

Metro's anti-terrorism drill at Union Station yesterday—50 transit police officers, bomb technicians, M-4 rifles, and the scariest thing of all, McGruff the Crime Dog—will be followed by several more simulated tactical operations, the agency reports:

The first drill takes place on Friday, Feb. 12, in the parking lot at RFK Stadium. The scenario simulates an explosion on a Metrobus and an explosive found on a second Metrobus. The second exercise on Saturday, Feb. 13, entails an explosion on a Metrorail train in the tunnel between the Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom-GWU Metrorail stations. The final tactical drill takes place Wednesday, Feb. 24, where active shooters are reported at the Friendship Heights Metrorail station.

Happy hump day.

This coming week, though, City Paper corrects this historic wrong.

In his review of British saxophonist John Surman's new album, Brent Burton compares the album favorably withMahavishnu Orchestra the trio his guitarist, John Abercrombie, playedled in the early '70s. With Jack DeJohnette and...JAN HAMMER.

And Ben Westhoff reviews Savoir Adore's In the Wooded Forest, reaching the review's halfway point before offhandedly mentioning that Savoire Adore's Paul Hammer is son of Jan and RECORDED IN HIS HOUSE.

Area prog enthusiast Erik Wemple suggests Jeff Beck's "Darkness, Earth in Search of the Sun" as an entry point for Hammer newbies, but I think it's best to start with non-deep cuts: the Miami Vice theme (album version!) and, for funnies, this particularly ill-advised collaboration with Journey guitarist Neil Schon:

Why is Jan Hammer in a box wound with string? Jan Hammer should be free!

Silverdocs, white supremacists and more, after the jump.

• It was only a matter of time: Already the Washington Post, not 24 hours after James W. von Brunn opened fire at the Holocaust Museum, is asking "Did that controversial Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists (pdf) get it right?" And sayeth the POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "Civil rights activists say a string of recent attacks blamed on right-wing extremists, including Wednesday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum, show that conservative critics were too quick to fault the Department of Homeland Security over an April report warning about the potential for such violence." My take: Conservatives, arguably, have a right to be upset. More often than not, "conservative" is a simpler term for a whole range of peaceful ideas and political decisions. Anti-semitism and racism are no more apart of conservatism than eco-terrorism is apart of liberalism. In testimony from 2002, the FBI divided domestic terrorism into three categories: right-wing, left-wing, and special interest. From the FBI: "Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change. Special interest extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including the general public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to their causes. These groups occupy the extreme fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other movements." So before the DHS decided to sow discord–and before the MSM decided to latch onto this new report for dear life–the FBI already had a term that managed to address the problem without associating conservatism with terrorism: "special interest extremists." Michael Moynihan has some smart (brief) thoughts on yesterday's shooting.
• Silverdocs is here. From Tricia Olszewski's (brutal) opening salvo: "Unlike last year’s fest—which boasted, among many other excellent films, future Oscar-winner Man on Wire and nominee Encounters at the End of the World—few of the 122 documentaries being presented are home runs. We were able to review nearly 70 of this year’s entries, approximately double our coverage of 2008’s festival, and not many of them left us drooling. An inevitability of numbers, or is Silverdocs stumbling? With celebrities gracing the screenings and the world watching, it likely doesn’t matter." As for me, I got pretty choked up watching The Way We Get By, and can't think of a single friend, family member, or down-on-his-luck stranger to whom I would not recommend this film. Absolutely stunning. And Trimpin opened my eyes to the joys of reviewing movies while high sound installations.