By special contributor Brett Gellman of The Upstate Life This Thursday's nationally televised contest, in which the West Virginia Mountaineers will visit the Maryland Terrapins in College Park, will be the last time these border state rivals meet until 2010. Not only are bragging rights on the line, but the Mountaineers' national title hopes are also at stake. Both schools will be playing their hardest opponent thus far and both stand undefeated at 2-0. Both......

If sex were a genre of music, Jette Kelly might be the John Lennon, Madonna and Etta James of the style all rolled into one. The 27-year-old songstress has the song-writing prowess, sex appeal and voice to back both of them up. Last year, Jette teamed up with local electronic producer Holmes Ives for a Frou Frou meets Massive Attack meets Goldfrapp one-off project under the name Jette-Ives. An Emerson graduate, Jette spent most of......

Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues. Things used to be clearer for Fairfax County. It used to be known as the epitome of upper-middle class suburbanity, even earning name-checks in popular novels and songs as such. With acres and acres of rolling hills covered in leafy suburbs and landscaped office parks, it was a quiet complement to the quirky inner suburbs of Northern Virginia and the dense chaos......

Saxophonist Matt Rippetoe is a busy man. A mainstay within the D.C. jazz circuit, Rippetoe plays regularly with several different groups that cover a variety of styles. He has performed at Bohemian Caverns, Blues Alley, Cafe Nema, Jo-Jos, Tryst, Utopia, Columbia Station... basically all the local places. The time has finally arrived for him to take charge as a band leader and this Sunday, June 29th, at 8 p.m., he will celebrate the release of......

As a Japanese immigrant growing up in West Virginia, Hiroyuki Hamada spoke little English. Frustrated by the inability to communicate, Hamada started to create his own language through art. Now on view at the Randall Scott Gallery, is a collection of this language and an exploration of texture, form and composition. Hamada uses various materials to create large two and three-dimensional artwork. Many of the pieces take several years to finish. Layering the numerous materials......

It's the first day of summer, which means it's about to get real slow in the art world. Take advantage of the gallery shows before they break for the season, then move on to the air conditioned goodness of the museums come the heat of August. >> Project 4 breathes life into a razed electrical switch room in Ireland that had been abandoned 25 years earlier in Building. A group of Belfast and Brooklyn artists......

The controversial plan authored by Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham to relocate a number of strip clubs displaced by the new Nationals stadium into Ivy City, a neighborhood in Ward 5, got even more interesting this week. The D.C. Council on Tuesday agreed to spend $3.6 million to reduce the "impact" of the relocated clubs, in a rare earmarking of funds for a specific neighborhood. Ivy City is bordered by Bladensburg Road, New York......

Don't panic, Washington! You didn't in fact leap ahead an entire month when changing your clocks on Sunday. A mere week after temperatures dipped into the low 30's, today we can expect the mercury to hit an unseasonably high 70 degrees, with tomorrow getting even warmer. Why not walk to work and avoid soaring gas prices? Oh, that's right. Traffic Cameras Only Halfway There: A new assessment of D.C.'s traffic cameras by the company slated......

We couldn't help but ask ourselves a few questions after hearing that Matthew Fox would be in D.C. to promote his new movie, We Are Marshall. Did he finally get off the island for the interview, or were we just going to be in another one of his flashbacks? How would we get answers out of a man who spent days refusing to cooperate with "the others" in an old empty shark tank? Would it......

>> Is that a branch of Rock Creek or is Q St. just happy to see us? It's wet out there and many D.C. streets and sidewalks are swelling over. Parts of our area are still under siege from a storm front that turned deadly in N.C . A flash flood and tornado watch for D.C. should expire at 6 p.m., but don't expect to find completely dry conditions on the commute home. Elsewhere, Stafford,......

You're running out of time for that trip to the country to find the perfect pumpkin to carve for Halloween. No one should feel obligated to go quite as far as Ric Griffith, the West Virginia man featured in a little write-up in the Post yesterday (this picture is not to be believed). If you want just a pumpkin or two, here are some suggestions for places other than the local supermarket, if you're willing......

The -ist empire is expanding. It took a few blogger beatdowns to establish our presence, but we're now officially the only real blog in College Park, Maryland. Kidding. We totally got beat to that market. This morning we were tipped off to a new blog that will give the same attention to College Park that we give to the District and its environs. The College Park Site, in its own words, is: ...a news and......

There's a lot of fear being sold these days in D.C. Yesterday District residents were treated to fear from both local and national leaders. President George W. Bush again played the terrorism card in a speech downtown, slyly insinuating that a Democratic victory in November's midterm elections would find Al Qaeda terrorists freely walking the streets of American cities. More locally, mayoral hopeful Linda Cropp doled out some fear of her own, warning of the......

We may as well mention it, since it'll be the water-cooler talk of the day -- that was quite the storm last night. According to the Post, it was so bad that many morning commutes today might be delayed -- parts of the Beltway have been closed, all VRE train service has been cancelled, and Metro has been forced to close two stations along the Blue and Orange Lines due to high water. At the......

Large Sewage Spill Sours Potomac River: Some 17 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the Potomac River on Saturday, reports NBC 4. The spill was caused by a three-hour power failure at the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant on the eastern back of the river. And though 17 million gallons sounds like a lot, the EPA has predicted that the spill won't have a major impact, a claim countered by the Anacostia Watershed......

Ask and ye shall receive, right? Some Chevy Chase residents are wishing it weren't so. Residents of the Northwest neighborhood are a little angry that increased police patrols -- caused by a rash of thefts -- have led to a higer number of parking tickets, or so writes the Washington Times. And what does the police have to say about that? Writes the Times: An official in the police department's 2nd District, which includes......

On Wednesday, the Census released its 2005 estimates for county populations across the country. You can read yesterday's Post coverage, which focused on the rapid growth in the region's exurbs, here. What we're excited about, however, is the ability to put together metropolitan population numbers for Washington at the halfway point between the 2000 and 2010 census. Ok, first what we already know: the District is still losing population (D.C.'s estimate actually came out......

It was a busy weekend for college hoops in the area. By and large, it was also a successful one. George Washington clinched the regular season Atlantic 10 title, beating Fordham 78-67 at the Smith Center Saturday night. Playing without injured forward Pops Mensah-Bonsu, the Colonials won their sixteenth straight game behind 19 points from sophomore guard Maureece Rice. His backcourt mates, Danilo Pinnock (17 points) and Carl Elliott (16 points) also stepped up in......

George Washington won its 15th straight game last night, but the bigger news is that star forward Pops Mensah-Bonsu twisted his knee just before halftime and didn't return. Mensah-Bonsu, the team's second-leading scorer and rebounder, will be evaluated today. We (or, more likely, some alert DCist reader) will have an update on his status when it becomes available. Reserve forward Regis Koundjia stepped up in Mensah-Bonsu's absence, chipping in with 13 points, 5 rebounds and......

>>The votes are in and as of now, it looks like the Washington Wizards will not be represented in this year's NBA All Star game. Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison, both elected last year, will have to make other plans for All Star weekend after the coaches left them off of their ballots this year. Arenas is a suprising omission given that he's fourth in the entire league in scoring in addition to the......

It being Super Bowl Sunday, there weren't many people too concerned with college basketball yesterday, but those who were saw Georgetown continue its outstanding season with a 61-58 defeat of No. 9 Pittsburgh. The game had a strange texture to it. Georgetown won despite a minus-12 rebounding margin and just two points from the bench. The Hoyas found themselves trailing 33-18 before closing the first half on a 10-2 run that trimmed the deficit......

Eamonn, Brother There is no stopping the Armstrongs, proprietors of Restaurant Eve in Old Town. Not only are they whizzes in the kitchen, their fecundity (both physical and entrepreneurial) has begot another place to eat. According to Tom, Cathal and Meshelle plan to open Eamonn's/A Dublin Chipper sometime this summer. The place will be a casual joint, unlike the formal (and so worth it) affair that is Eve. It looks like fish and chips will......

A lead story in the Post's Metro section this morning is the stuff to either make you queasy or curious. It involves one house, eight entomologists, and 70,000 bugs of assorted variety. It also features a man paid $11 to sit in a lawn chair with a patch of skin exposed for up to eight hours a day, a guinea pig for testing insect repellants. This isn't the stuff that real news is made......

You've seen them selling t-shirts, bumper stickers, and magazines on the busy corners of Georgetown, Dupont Circle, and other areas. Their schwag carries the same bold slogan: "Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution." Perhaps you or a friend have even purchased a shirt or sticker. And although we hadn't put much thought into who the people selling the stuff might be, this week's City Paper delves deep into the source -- a West Virginia-based agrarian commune......

Now that DCist has a year's worth of material to work with, we can finally start rooting through our dusty archives to find out exactly what was happening on this very day, one year ago. Ok, so it's not exactly what the New York Times has to offer (which includes stories of historical importance, alongside cool black and white pics of the world of yester-decade), but it's something. Starting today, DCist will feature a daily......

Catherine Andrews contributed to these picks FRIDAY: >> Okay, so it's not quite as groovy as the sing-along versions that swept the country over the last few years, but if you're looking for something a little bit fun and a whole lot wholesome tonight, you could do worse than the National Symphony Orchestra accompanying "The Wizard of Oz" on the lawn at the Wolf Trap. 8:30 p.m., $18 to $38. SATURDAY: >> Chopteeth, a......

In Hinduism, Ardhanarishvara is the "Half-female Lord," essentially Shiva in an androgynous form. Well fisherman pulled out a very rare gender-confused crab, or a "bilateral gynandromorph," from the lower Chesapeake Bay, the Post reports. (Well, it's almost like Ardhanarishvara, except for the crab's male section was on the left and female section on the right. The Hindu deity's gender orientation is swapped.) While this could be just a random fluke (we're by no means an......

Today D.C. socialite bloggers awake facing less competition, the city has its first official mayoral candidacy announcement, and a friend of DCist speaks about his experiences as a journalist in Iraq. Plus it's looking to be beautiful outside. At left is the New River Gorge Bridge, the world's second-longest and country's second highest single-arch bridge, one of the highlights of this DCist's recent visit to West Virginia. Northern Virginia Group Bidding for Nats: The Post......

Just when we think we can't get enough news on invasive species (snakeheads and gender-confused bass), the W.Times reports that we could be dealing with alligators in the near future. Alligators have been discovered upriver from Washington and in waters closer to the Chesapeake Bay, despite the fact that "alligators don't belong up here," an Agriculture Department wildlife services spokesman tells the W.Times, which based its report in part from wire services. Two West Virginia......

Today will be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain in the morning and highs around 60. The photo is one of the historical images posted by Petworth News of some D.C. streetcars. Hourly Car Rental Increasing: The Post profiles today the expanding popularity of the two major hourly car rental services in the region: Flexcar and Zipcar. The D.C. area is unique because it's the only place both companies have gone head-to-head: "After three-plus......