Wonkette

Every now and then, we come across legitimate excuses to get trashed on a Monday - proof of God’s everlasting love for the working man (and woman, I guess). If you’re still in the District and have yet plan out your New Year’s festivities, you’ve got quite a few options for how to spend your final evening of 2007 (some more expensive than others). It’s been one hell of a year, and we’re going to try to make it one hell of a night. MORE »

Don’t you just love it when some quippy Business Section jackass at the WaPo decides to tackle gentrification on a small business-level, assumes a positive urban-renewal tone but ultimately just says “IT’S A LOT BETTER IN THIS AREA SINCE THE BLACK PEOPLE LEFT”? Well, we had one of those today, about a liquor store. The subhead: “As Rough-Hewn Area Goes Upscale, Merchant Shifts From Beer to Champagne.” What a merrily racist Christmas Eve ’tis! MORE »

George Clooney, the Farsi-speaking rogue federal agent who killed a Saudi prince in either real life or the movie Syriana (forget which), came to our Washingtons over the weekend to film his new movie, Burn After Reading. It’s so fun when a famous person comes to DC! All we have here usually are Joe Schmoes like the President and Congress. MORE »

* Terrorists strike at Farragut North — millions killed, delayed. [why.i.hate.dc]
* “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” [Arjewtino]
* Reading is FUNdamental. [DCist]
* “So, like fat people could create their own nation?” [Eavesdrop DC]
* Fuck the police. [Metroblogging DC]

Deadly SMOKE is crippling DC’s heralded subway system. Two nights in a row now have seen mass outages and evacuations across the entire train network, with mysterious smoke pouring into tunnels and seven trains losing power. Metro officials are bewildered and not even pretending to know what’s going on. Is it terrorism? Is it sabotage? All they’ll tell us is that we must all panic. MORE »

Washington, DC’s beloved subway system is getting a bureaucratic nightmare of a makeover. The Metro — known for its Albert Speer-influenced identical oppressive stations, its moldy carpets, its embarrassing 70s color scheme, and the fact that it’s designed around funneling douchebags in and out of the center of the city from their walled suburban outposts of safe whiteness without regard to ease of intra-city travel for people who actually live here — is more or less impervious to improvement because its board is made up of 80-year-old rich people who hate change. MORE »

We like to start our Tuesdays on a bright note, and here’s some great news from our Virginia friends: barring a number of possible (and in some cases very probable) set-backs, you might be able to take the train the rest of the way to Dulles in nine years! If you’re still alive! MORE »

A rogue Circulator bus crashed into a Georgetown office building earlier today, causing one injury and the hilarious image you see to the right. MORE »

* Couple things that belong in To Do: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Embassy of Spain and the Embassy of Finland host LIVE CINEMATIC DIPLOMACY tonight. “Cutting edge visual stylings of pioneering Finnish live cinema artist Solu, with DJ Samantha Waldram from Barcelona, Spain. Also performing will be VJ Tesia K of Chicago, with DC’s First Ladies DJ Collective. Drinks and light fare included, in our majestic Great Hall.” $20 at 6PM. [NMWA]
* Acceptance author Susan Coll reads tonight at P&P. She’ll remind you why it rules to not be from DC with her “cheerfully pointed satire about the college-admissions process at a suburban Washington, D.C., high school where students and/or their parents have Ivy League aspirations.” Coll is guest blogging at The Happy Booker today. [The Happy Booker]
* Good news for those who wake up in strange beds tomorrow morning, the Metro opens an hour earlier, at 6AM. [Frozen Tropics]
* People behind Jaleo, Zaytinya, Cafe Atlantico and Oyamel are hiring someone to oversee their recipe database. [DCFUD]
* The Police to play Baltimore April 5th. [LIFESTYLE OF AN AMERICAN ROCK AND ROLL BAND]

When the Soviets built the Moscow subway, they made the stations into temples of public luxury so that every citizen could feel proud of the capital and the communist system. When the DC Metro was built, somebody thought it would be super classy to put carpet in the subway cars — thankfully, the “mirrors on the ceiling” idea was not approved. MORE »