The guitarist for the pop-punk band Hawthorne Heights passed away before the group's show at the 9:30 Club over the weekend. Casey Calvert, 25, was found dead on the band's tour bus at around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, parked outside the venue in Northwest D.C. A cause of death has yet to be determined, but Calvert's bandmates have been quick to defend against speculation that drugs were involved. They posted the following message to their......

>> Lieutenant Sean M. Egan of the District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department has emailed out a citywide call for blood donations in the wake of four D.C. firefighters having been seriously burned yesterday at a rowhouse fire at 621 4th St. NE. You can find a blood donation center here. >> George Clooney is in D.C., and still hott. [GossipGirls] >> Police are investigating an arson at Western Presbyterian Church on Virginia......

About two years ago, DCist overheard a sadly familiar exchange by two young Republican Hill staffers on an Amtrak train from New York to D.C. As far as we could tell just by eavesdropping, one of them worked for then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and she was complaining, or really just explaining in an emphatically loud voice, that the senator would not let female staffers into meetings who were not wearing a skirt suit with......

This week, Phillyist saw the waters of a landmark fountain run red for a Showtime marketing stunt, the Phils pull ahead, and some serious nostalgia. They also got a chance to review an awesome tribute album, reminded folks to see the King, and appreciated their beautiful skyline. Chicagoist knows what it's like to like the Cubs. But naming your kid Wrigley Fields? At least they can breathe a little easier now that Grossman's out and......

Fishbowl D.C. scooped even the Washington Post's own gossip columnists on word that Brad Pitt was reportedly visiting the paper's newsroom this afternoon. Says a Postie: "since word got out, female producers from network news shops are clamoring to stop by and just pay a "visit" to the newsroom to see friends they've never visited before in the newsroom."Patrick Gavin says Pitt was there consulting with Post editor R.B. Brenner in preparation for his upcoming......

Of the numerous romantic notions surrounding the writing life, perhaps none dies harder than that of the solitary, ink-stained wretch plugging away at his or her latest work in some dilapidated garret, alone and unnoticed and oblivious to what's going on around him or her. Writing may be a solitary act, but as any intellectually honest writer can tell you, writers need communities: first, because the realities of today's writing life necessitate that one be......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

MONDAY: A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the wife of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Connie Schultz will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her book ... And His Lovely Wife, which is her behind-the-scenes look at Brown's campaign and their marriage. 7 p.m. In Last One In, Nicholas Kulish, who was embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter squadron for the Wall Street Journal, spins a slightly unbelievable tale of a gossip columnist who ends up covering......

No Paper Crowns for the Guests The Majestic—the latest addition to Cathal and Meshelle Armstrong's Alexandria empire—held its preview party last night, and DCist was in the house. The King Street restaurant was packed with all your various foodie types mauling the chef and owners, mugging for the roving photographers, and swilling both wine and gossip. With such a high density of gastronauts, I'm sure Majestic's owners would have rather been serving up their food......

Guys, guys, guys. We know you hit up DCist to check out this week's line-up at the Black Cat or the new gossip in the foodie world, but we like to think you love this city more than just for its evening entertainment possibilities and decent grasshopper taco locales. Last week we told you about our team for Servathon 2007, which will be taking part in the volunteer day on May 5. Team DCist will......

At the end of the first installment of Francesca Zambello's American Ring Cycle, last year's Das Rheingold premiered at Washington National Opera, the gods went into Valhalla on what looked like the gang plank of a cruise liner, clinking their champagne flutes. Richard Wagner adapted the libretti of his four-opera cycle from German mythology, and Zambello's idea was to exchange the German myths in the operas for American ones. The gold-hungry Alberich became a......

It's hard to know where to start this week, given all the news in Washington's food world. Chef changes, award nominations, scandals, and battles have enveloped us without us even noticing. Let's dig right in, juicy stuff first. Review Not, that Ye be Not Reviewed A couple weeks back we told you about a fight between New York Times critic Frank Bruni and restaurateur Jeffery Chodorow. Now, close your eyes, replace Frank Bruni with a......

Clearly, the District is tired of being referred to as "Hollywood for Ugly People." Instead, we'd like to be called "Hollywood for Ugly People Who Also Pay for Sex." The Washington Times has the latest on a bomb of salacious gossip that may be about to go off in our fair city. For some background, The Smoking Gun first talked about the case back in October. It's hard to know whether to be worried or......

Veteran gossip columnist Michael Musto is in town today promoting his new book, La Dolce Musto, a collection from his columns of the same name (he'll be at Nage Restaurant from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.). The bespectacled provocateur has spent 20 years at the Village Voice chronicling New York City’s gay life, nightlife and sex life, sometimes in terms that would make Candace Bushnell blush. Along with the tales of club kids, politics and sex......

Although the DCist Food and Drink team would prefer to associate the word "turnover" exclusively with "apple," we also recognize that staff "turnover" is an inevitable fact of the blogging world. Two writers recently left us for print publications, and three others retired from service. In short, we've run low on qualified Food and Drink writers. When we need to restock, it's not as simple as heading to the local Whole Foods for wild-caught salmon......

In all honesty, it's tough to wholeheartedly recommend going out on New Year's Eve at all. We love the spirit of the holiday, but paying around $100 a person for a regular night of dancing dressed up with champagne is enough to make anyone feel like a schmuck. It's a safe bet most of us at DCist will be hitting various house parties to ring in the new year with friends at a more reasonable......

Rain, rain, rain. Our apologies, Washington. We'd love to tell you that it's going to be a beautiful Indian summer day. Instead we find ourselves staring at weather.com, trying to divine what the subtle differences between their various rain icons could possibly mean. Well, happy Tuesday. Gallaudet Faculty Votes No Confidence In Jordan: NBC4 reports on the latest from Gallaudet. It appears that the weekend's arrests have shaken the faculty's faith in university president......

Benefit for Argonaut Bartender Tonight As you may have read in this morning's weekend picks, Argonaut and the Englert family of bars are having an event tonight to benefit one of their bartenders who was seriously injured by a gunman when walking to his girlfriend's from work. Luis "Quike" Morales was shot on September 30 in an apparent robbery gone awry, and has only recently come out of his coma. Unfortunately, our ass backwards health......

FRIDAY: >> We'd be remiss if we didn't note that tonight will be the last time that Kathryn of Kathryn On will host one of her famous Blogger Happy Hours. It starts at 7 p.m. at Lucky Bar. Fans of the regular happy hour shouldn't fear, however, as Kathryn says she has "a couple of fledgling social chairs waiting in the wings." Thanks for all the hard work you've put in, Kathryn, to making the......

The ladies of the Reliable Source break Washington's heart this morning, revealing that Jenna Bush, who's lived in Washington and worked as a teacher for over a year, is preparing to leave the city and the country. The Source notes that she's moving out of her apartment and back into 1600 Penn until she's ready to leave for a new teaching gig, somewhere in Latin America. Says the Post:The move reflects the growing seriousness of......

A year-and-a-half on, and today we celebrate 4,000 posts on all things Washington -- news, music, arts, food, sports, gossip and Butterstick. And of course, comments, comments and more comments -- almost 25,000 in total. Thanks, guys.......

That's right, the bohemoth purveyor of legal stimulants is celebrating the Ides of March in a slightly less stabbing-someone-in-the-back sort of way...by giving away free coffee. From the press release: WHAT: Starbucks will host its first-ever Starbucks Coffee Break, inviting customers across the country to enjoy a complimentary cup of freshly brewed coffee. In stores and on street corners, from insulated brewing equipment and giant coffee backpacks, partners (employees) will pour tall (12-ounce) cups of......

This post was written by Bobby Cox, who blogs at Deaf DC. Gallaudet University is located on Florida Avenue in Northeast. When I first visited D.C. in 1997, an earnest young man described Gallaudet this way: "It's an Oreo! You have the mixed, predominantly black population around the University and a creamy mass of white, deaf people in the middle!" Unfortunately for some, that creamy mass in the middle is ripe for the taking. Among......

Rumor Mill Grinding Up There may be changes afoot where the West End, Foggy Bottom, and Downtown meet. In the midst of this vortex, Smith Properties is redoing the office building that houses a law firm, a Bank of America, a cell phone store, and—most importantly—Galileo Restaurant. Galileo?! Duhn Duhnh Duhhhhhhhhn. The building itself at 2101 L St. NW is coming down, but what of the best Italian restaurant in the District? What of local......

Buck's Has a Cow Over at DCFoodies.com, our restaurant-reviewing pal Jason Storch has run into some legal trouble. It seems that he received a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney purporting to represent Buck's Fishing and Camping. What did Storch do to deserve this? Did he too loudly insist that chef Carole Greenwood stop stalking him through his television set? Did he open a restaurant next door called Jason's Hunting and Whitewater-Rafting? No, it simply seems......

The music world is frequently awash with news that this or that johnny-come-lately hit band got where it's at due to the tectonic bluzz of the music blogosphere. Many music fans including, until recently, us, assume this means Pitchfork and NME and go along their merry way, never knowing the frightening music underworld, dank with incestuous linkage and the often licit posting of mp3s, dirty with the latest mashups and double secret background band gossip......

We're not ones to peddle in rumors and gossip, but this one was worth too much to pass up. The Post's Reliable Sources reported the following today on Nicole Kidman, in town filming a new alien thriller, which we publish un-edited: The script of "The Visiting" -- an alien-epidemic thriller due out next year -- called for Kidman's character to race into the Cleveland Park station, some kind of evil in pursuit, and hop the......

Council-member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) has probably had better weeks. Monday brought revelations from the Post that he had used a political action committee he controlled to pay himself back for certain expenses, and today the Post reported that he may have been reimbursed twice for an official trip to China and Taiwan last October. While not as juicy as leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent to the press and not as gossip......

DCist has been sent some unsubstantiated celebrity sightings from this weekend. We put our fact checkers hot on the confirmation trail, but really, celebrity sightings are more intriguing gossip than serious journalistic news, so we've decided to go straight to you, our eyes and ears on the ground. So dish already. Here are the details as we know them right now: On Saturday, the D.C. Office of Motion Picture and Television Development hosted an open......

Browsing through our recent copy of People, DCist noted a brief article on Jonathan Cheban's trendy tees that the likes of Nicole Ritchie, Lindsey Lohan and Ms. Paris herself own. Cheban, a celeb-connected networker, has leveraged his connections into a high-profile PR career and recently partnered with notorious publicist Lizzie Grubman. Now, Gawker isn't overly fond of Cheban and the Post ran a rather lengthy piece highlighting his obsequious buzz techniques a few months back,......