This weekend the Capitals decided not to add a great goalie to pull them up from the dregs of the standings. After losing seven of eight games, the Caps were in last place. This gave them the first chance to pick up Ilya Bryzgalov, a goalie placed on waivers because he didn't enjoy playing backup on the Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks. Two years ago, Bryzgalov posted one of the greatest playoff shutout streaks in......

FRIDAY: >> Local comic book store Fantom Comics is celebrating the grand opening of their new Union Station store tonight with a party from 6 to 10:30 p.m. They'll be serving up free pizza on the early side and the comedy stylings of the Geek Comedy Tour during the second half of the night. There will also be a trivia contest with $500 gift certificates up for grabs. The party is inside the Union......

.354 from the field .203 from three point land 91.7 points per game No matter how you look at the numbers, it's clear the Washington Wizards struggled in the opening week of the NBA season, a fact reflected in their 0-3 record. The team looks disjointed on offense, taking bad shots and turning the ball over with impunity. And by giving up 105+ points per game - good for 26th in the league -......

This Thursday marks the start of the Fall Festival of Indian Arts, a program that is now in its fourth installment. This year's festival is entitled Celebrating Freedom, in honor of the 60th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence. Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh & Co., a local dance company, is staging the event and its mission is to mirror the modern South Asian experience by presenting traditional Indian dance forms in tandem with modern stylings. The......

The depictions and roles of women in hip-hop debate has raged on and off for several years now with varying degrees of depth. Most of the arguments posit that the relationship between women and hip-hop isn’t positive by using lyrical content and music videos by male artists as exhibits A and B. After the requisite freedom of speech assertions made during the rebuttal, the talk dies down again and the status quo remains. Often lacking......

>> Fort Reno has The Caribbean, Len Bias and The Ardennes. But the National Weather Service has a Severe Thunder Storm Watch from 2 to 9 p.m., so you might want to hedge your bets and make a back-up plan. >> Ohio's alt-country rawkers Two Cow Garage stop by the Red and the Black tonight, with Minneapolis' Birthday Suits and Richmond's Clint Maul for what should be a loud, fun show all around. $8,......

FRIDAY: >> Even though Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an obvious choice for the movie-going crowd this weekend, the Avalon Theatre -- just north of the Potter madness at the Uptown -- is showing Talk to Me, the new biopic on the life of famed Washington, D.C., talk-show host and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. 5:50 and 8:30 p.m. >> Unbuckled alumni The Vita Ruins celebrate the release of their......

Last night at the NBA Draft, the West got better by picking some young talent (Greg Oden to Portland, Kevin Durant to Seattle) and the East got better by trading for talent (Zach Randolph to New York, Ray Allen to Boston). The Wizards got better by selecting USC shooting guard/small forward Nick Young. Young averaged just over 17 points per game last year at SoCal and is known for his mid-range jumper and fearless......

If you approach the District every morning via the I-270 Interchange at the Capital Beltway in Montgomery County, you probably let an impressive barrage of expletives escape your lips on a daily basis about how bad a bottleneck the meeting of those two highways are. Luckily, Forbes magazine is here to tell you, you're not alone. Via WTOP, we learn today that the interchange in question has once again been named the 7th worst bottleneck......

It's not every day that British bands come to D.C. in a red doubledecker bus. The BritBus tour stopped downtown yesterday, bringing three new groups — Jyrojets from Scotland, The Crave from Brighton, and Julia Jones from London via Wales — around the country at a top speed of 45 miles per hour. According to bassist Tom Swann from The Crave, it took four days to get from Denver to St. Louis, and although the......

A new survey conducted by AutoVantage, a Connecticut-based automobile membership club, and Prince Market Research reveals which U.S. cities have the worst cases of road rage -- and D.C. came in at number five, behind only Los Angeles (#4), Boston (#3), New York (#2) and Miami (#1). From CNN.com: The most frequent cause of road rage cited in the survey was impatient motorists. Drivers also said road rage can stem from poor driving in fast......

Reunion tours are delicate affairs. If your band manages to sort through all the layers of dysfunction that probably caused you to stop wanting to play music together to begin with, and manages to do so without blowing the tour budget on group therapy to get there, you still have to deal with the questions of whether anything you said before is still relevant and if you still have the guts to say it with......

Before last night the Florida Panthers had beaten the Capitals five straight times. In those five meetings, the Panthers were struggling to make the playoffs. Last night was Florida's first game since their elimination from playoff contention, and their lack of motivation showed from the start. The Capitals, possibly by accident, capitalized on their lackadaisical opposition to claim a meaningless victory over their fellow non-competitors. Alexander Ovechkin scored his forty-fourth goal of the season on......

Last week Prevention magazine put out its list of the Best Walking Cities of 2007. We were a little bit surprised by the results: 1. Madison, Wisconsin 2. Austin, Texas 3. San Francisco, California 4. Charlotte, North Carolina 5. Seattle, Washington 6. Henderson, Nevada 7. San Diego, California 8. San Jose, California 9. Chandler, Arizona 10. Virginia Beach, Virginia OK, so the top five cities are all plausible, even if we have a hard time......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

127-105. Yeah, it was that bad. Worse even. So much for all the talk about "swag" and "tough juice." Only time will tell if last night's shellacking at the hand of the Phoenix Suns will start the backlash on the hype and attention the Wizards have earned this year, but boy was it ugly. The crowd of 20,173, not to mention the huge media contingent, came to the Verizon Center last night be entertained......

After last Friday's win in Orlando and upcoming games this week against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons, Saturday night's game at the Verizon Center against the banged up Boston Celtics had all the characteristics of a trap game. The Celtics were without Paul Pierce, Wally Szczerbiak and Tony Allen, among others, and losers of seven of their last eight games. Should be easy pickings, right? Well, almost. The Wiz built up a big......

When the NBA schedule was released before the start of the season, I doubt many people circled the four games pitting Washington against Milwaukee. Too bad, because they are missing one of the NBA's best budding rivalries. These two teams, each led by a former second round pick turned All Star, have played some incredibly exciting games in the last two years. Last night's 108-105 Wizards win was more of the same. Gilbert Arenas,......

This week saw the official introduction of our newest service to make all of our social lives that much easier -- Last Call. For those of you that missed the news, our tech guru Tom Lee has set up a system through which you can check Metro arrival times, movies, weather and open tables at area restaurants by simply sending us a text message with your query. We're working to iron out any hiccups, so......

What can we say about Phoenix? They were wonderful last year, and their second trip to D.C. upheld that high standing. A small but enthusiastic crowd greeted the four boys of Phoenix, joined for the performance by an incredibly impressive drummer and a new keyboardist (filling in while their normal man on keys tends to his newborn). Touring to promote their new album, It's Never Been Like That (out in stores May 23), the......

Today's Opinionist comes to DCist from local art blogger Kriston Capps. For all this time, D.C. Mayor Williams has billed himself as a supporter of big boxes in the District. During yesterday’s town hall meeting to discuss the fate of the city’s public library system, the Mayor revealed himself to be no friend to our most notorious big box—the Mies Van der Rohe-designed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. And he made no new friends......

It's no secret that this Thursday and Friday afternoon thousands of area employees will "run errands," sneak off to the office TV lounge, or otherwise alt-tab their way through the day as NCAA conference tournament play blesses us all with daytime television that doesn't suck. March Madness isn't the only productivity killer available this week, however. The World Baseball Classic, which began last week with Pool A games featuring China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, comes......

When the NBA calendar turns to March, teams are either start thinking about lottery choices or jockeying for playoff position. The Washington Wizards, after a slow start to the season, seemed to find their groove in February and catapulted themselves back into the playoff race, currently holding a precarious grip on the sixth seed in the East. Tonight on ESPN, they take on Allen Iverson and the Philadelphia 76ers, who currently trail the Wizards......

According to the Chinese calendar, 2005 might have been the Year of the Rooster. But in the D.C. dining world, 2005 was most certainly the Year of the Phoenix. No other year in recent memory has seen so many elements of the District's dining-and-drinks scene burn down to the ground -- some more literally than others -- only to be rebuilt again. And often as something else altogether. The DCist Food team has reported......

When we last checked in on them, the Washington Wizards were 8-11 and facing a tough five game road trip that would go a long way in deciding the outcome of their season. After losing their first three in L.A. (to the Lakers), Portland and Seattle, the team pulled out the last two games in Denver and Phoenix, giving them some much needed momentum when they returned home to face the Lakers last night.......

Good morning, Washington. Like every other publication in town, we can't resist a good cover photo of the baby panda. We know how little Tai Shan feels: sometimes we also feel a little apprehensive and just want to peek around corners. The photo was posted along with two other by Flickr user randomduck. Today will be cloudy with highs in the 30s. Kaine Announces Slow Growth Plans: Virginia Governor-elect Tim Kaine announced he's serious about......

With the rainy, cloudy weather -- all dominated by the intense news coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II -- it hasn't been the most uplifting past couple of days. Since we can't add much more to what's been said or written about the late pope, we'll do a survey of obituaries and headlines on the jump. But first, here's what you may have missed on DCist. -- If you're late for......

We've been doing some tinkering under the hood here at DCist headquarters, and we're excited to announce some site improvements. First, we've added an events listing to the main page called the "Public Calendar". It is located in the right hand column beneath the recent comments section. The events are drawn from the Washington, D.C. metro on the community events sharing website Upcoming.org. Upcoming allows users to upload information about events they are attending, post......

It was an all-European, all-the-time line up last night at the 9:30 Club as DCist headed out to see a bill of Long-View, a group from Manchester, Scottish quintet Dogs Die In Hot Cars and Parisian band Phoenix. Though we'd been hearing some buzz surrounding all three groups, especially following Long-View and DDIHC's recent performances at SXSW, we went into the concert without any expectations, but came out pleasantly surprised. The best word we......

Yesterday the NBA announced the reserve rosters for the 2005 NBA All Star Game in Denver, Co. and to no one's surprise, a pair of Wizards heard there names called out. Take a bow Antawn Jamison and Gilbert Arenas, you deserve it. Ballots had already been cast and counted before Arenas tied his career high with 43 points against the slumping Indiana Pacers on Monday night. Not wanting to be left out, Jamison chipped in......