Local band Georgie James are enjoying the famed “Voice bump”. A movie about their songwriting process has been nominated for an Emmy for its innovative approach to documentary filmmaking.

Naturally, the Voice was on the scene way before the Emmies.  Check out our Georgie James cover story, where guitarist John Davis revealed his potty mouth:

“I always get really annoyed when I hear people who haven’t been [in D.C.] that long say that they’re going to ‘put D.C. on the map’ … I’ve heard that many times in the last 3 or 4 years. We don’t need [new bands] to put D.C. on the map. It’s fucking on the map.”

Fighting words!

 Green is good and red is bad

Walkscore recently rated Washington the country’s 12th 7th most walkable city, with Georgetown barely breaking into the “walker’s paradise” category. What the ratings can’t show, of course, is how darn unwalkable Georgetown is if you want to leave it.

Picture and via to Greater Greater Washington

Gone the way of the dodo

Despite not actually accomplishing its titular goal, Take Back Georgetown Day, the College Republicans’ annual lecture-fest, will not be returning this year. That news comes from GUCR president Erika Barger (COL ‘10), who said in an email that the Republicans will focus their energies on individual events instead. Hoyas raised on a steady ironic diet of Rush Limbaugh and Townhall.com are understandably anguished.

It didn’t happen last year, either, but Barger’s email just started my grieving. To mourn an event that always had the potential to make a lot of people mad, but never lived up to those expectations, let’s remember TBGD the way it would want to be remembered–angsty about women, and through the recollections of some crazy Catholics:

A busy line-up of prominent conservative speakers and workshops ran from 9:30AM to 4:30PM. In the lobby, representatives from various Washington, D.C. think tanks displayed literature and shared information. Members of TFP Student Action had their own table and were engaged in lively discussion during the greater part of the day. Many students promptly joined the TFP’s petition against the immoral “V-Monologues” scheduled to play again at Georgetown on February 17-18.

Flickr photo from user Decaf used under a Creative Commons license

When Vox Populi can’t post enough to fill your hunger for DC blogging, we frantically order take-out from other sites to serve you instead. Here are two recently restructured Washington blogs that might satisfy you:

• We Love DC. There was some drama at DC Metblogs, so some of its writers split and started this site. It’s a bit too much of a love-in now (”[In DC] I truly became who I am.”), but the design is rocking. That ought to translate into equally rocking posts once the transition’s over.
• Why I Hate DC . Rusty, the site’s last writer, packed off for duller pastures, so new blogger Liz had to write a takedown of the Post’s 12(!)-part Chandra Levy investigation.

I’m not as impressed with Liz as some of the commenters are. Her first post continued the site’s habit of picking weak targets–no doubt she’s only sharpening her machete on media sensationalism, and will soon turn on other sacred cows like people with popped collars and Metro delays.

Aaron Golds (COL ‘11), who I previously suspected of being a candidate for the student ANC spot, confirms via email that he wants the gig. I’m glad to hear it, but I hunger for more candidates to clash and tangle with Golds, all for the chance to meet thrice-monthly with ANC Commissioner Ed Solomon.

But then, maybe Golds’s motives aren’t so hard to understand. A commissioner told me once that being student commissioner is a great pick-up line–”Hey baby, I’m the youngest elected official in DC”–so maybe hanging out with Ed Solomon & Co. is just a brilliant scheme to add some more notches.

A Georgetown freshman moves into Village C, and discovers a heavy closet and a dim bathroom light. He does what anyone would do: make a Youtube video complaining about it, without any of that pesky “perspective” that has hindered past Youtubers:

Dare we hope for a Georgetown video blog star? There’s surely more to come from this fellow, who’s previously created Tila Tequila reviews. New videos will be nasty, too, because as his Youtube account says: “I didn’t get this thin and pretty being nice.”

That’s what I’ve decided after checking out And Now, Anacostia’s images of planned Anacostia development. Vacants are becoming office buildings, barbed wire fences are coming down, and Anacostia is going to look better and be safer.

To see what’s coming up, look at the difference between this picture of Martin Luther King Avenue:

and the proposed changes:

Add that to the proposed streetcars, and Anacostia is going to get downright walkable. As I discovered in the Anacostia story to end all Anacostia stories, currently trying to get somewhere in Anacostia ends in sweat-stained shirts and sadness.

Taxi Commissioner Leon Swain is a gruff man, but given the risks he faces on a daily basis, like mayoral purges so regular he can never be far from his heat, you can’t blame him. If he has to get a little icy sometimes just to cool down, who are we to judge?

Not all of Swain’s duties are so high-stakes, though. He also has to attend public comment sessions and experience all the little cuts they put in his vitality. Case in point: last June’s public comments (PDF).

In the minutes, Swain wrestles with cab drivers complaining about fare price, makes a woman speak last because he knows she’s a talker, and suspects one speaker of having a heart attack. Near the end of the meeting, Swain resigns himself to the drudgery necessary to drag a town into the new century:

Right now I realize that a lot of people are not happy. My phone numbers and everything else, my address, everything is public record. I have not changed my phonenumber. I have not taken my number out of the  telephone book. I get calls day and night. Some are very disgusting. Some don’t bother me at all. But guess what? That’s what happens.

Emphasis mine. I hope you appreciate those meters.

Wondering what life at Georgetown would be like if the color-coded terrorist warning rises above Yellow? The university’s preparedness plan knows and will tell you, in an ominous yet understated way.

At Orange, not much happens besides tighter security. But at Red, the shit gets heavy. Everyone has to wear an ID card, campus visitors have to be signed in, and buildings are locked down to one entrance, and a 24-hour “Emergency Operations Center” opens up. Fortunately, we won’t probably won’t hit Red unless something big happens, like bombs going off everywhere or an Iranian person attending graduation.

Flickr photo from djwhelan used under a Creative Commons license

The conservative writers over at The GW Patriot aren’t so bad–more David Brooks than Michael Savage, they know waterboarding’s torture. Plus, when one of them eats a vegan cinnamon bun and discovers to his horror that he likes it, the resulting cascade of self-doubt and overcompensation is far more exciting than any Brooks column.

Writer WHP, the offending bun-lover, opens by explaining which herbivores are in trouble with him, and which are not:

The first and most common, Vegetarianism, is just a simple refusal to consume animal flesh; I find this to be most acceptable considering that people do it for a whole variety of reasons, not just because they are against consuming animal flesh on “ethical” ground. The second, and oddest, is Veganism.

I’ve heard the same thing–”Vegetarians are cool with me, but vegans, get out of here!”–from at least three different people at Georgetown, and the implication that anyone is waiting for their approval about someone else’s diet is baffling.

A crisis of faith, after the jump

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